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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25698862">Because the Light Is Close</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/foibles_fables/pseuds/foibles_fables'>foibles_fables</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Warrior Nun (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Any Number of Feelings, Explicit Language, F/F, Friendship, Gay yearning, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Light Angst, POV Multiple, Post-Season/Series 01, Pre-Femslash, Sharing a Bed, weird post-crisis road trip</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:08:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>25,361</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25698862</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/foibles_fables/pseuds/foibles_fables</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“She’s breathing.” Beatrice’s fingers twitch against Ava’s neck, near where her head is cradled in her lap. “Her pulse is fast. But she’s alive. Beyond that, I can’t tell.” </p><p>An emergence, an escape, a twenty-four hour van ride, an abundance of beds (but no lack of sharing despite it), and any number of feelings clamoring through. [Immediately post-season 1, in five parts.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Shotgun Mary/Shannon Masters (implied), Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>376</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1368</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Hold the Weight of Your World</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It seems that a lot of my Warrior Nun pieces are a compilation of <em>LARGE SHRUG</em> and <em>CLICKS POST</em>, so...<em>large shrug</em> and <em>clicks post</em>.</p><p>Title from Transviolet's "One for the Angels."</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sharp pivot of all things begins with the recasting of their call to battle.</p><p>Mary shoves her way to the front of their tight formation, breathless but resolute, defiant and ready and definitively <em>fight</em> - a whiplash flurry of things Mary always is.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em> that.”</p><p>Two more unswerving steps and she’s standing between them and the approaching horde. Posturing, tilting, and reflected there in her eyes is a spirit whom Ava has only seen in a half-lit dream - <em>we all meet, eventually</em>, and then gasping collapse.</p><p>Mary finishes the new invocation because Sister Shannon would, but can’t.</p><p>“In <em>this</em> life.”</p><p>She brandishes her weapons to the swarm of possessed, the once-innocent bystanders, the passive unintentional supporters of this whole fucked-up system. Steady, sure, she calculates. The taken bodies amble near, swirling around their master, blank eyes unseeing but still so sinisterly trained on their targets. Ava holds her breath and can only count to one and a half before they’re close enough for Mary to bludgeon one, two, grunting with the effort, favoring the catharsis of blunt force over projectile.</p><p>She manages to land a kick to the chest of a third before she’s overrun, swarmed, suffocated, and her echoing screams send shards of glass through Ava’s blood.</p><p>From there, everything disintegrates.</p><p>And this time, Ava is neither<em> flight</em> nor <em>fight</em>. She’s <em>freeze</em>, and this new third option might be the worst of them. Everything happening around her is happening apart from her. Like watching it through the television screen from her creaking metal bed at St. Michael’s, numb and feeble. But she can feel, can move her body, now. Knows she can. She just was. She <em>could </em>move it, but it suddenly feels apart from her too - the Holy Sword is in her hands, glowing, scorching with blue, but she can’t feel its hilt, its weight, can’t lift it, couldn’t if she tried, and she’s <em>trying</em> with every ounce of her meager might.</p><p>Everything is suddenly surreal, happening out of order, out of time, out of space, maybe not even happening at all. She sees it in one whirling blur, muted by the sound of blood rushing in her ears.</p><p>Camila leaps forward first - no patience, no calm - hands quick on her weapon’s lock and a war cry quick from her throat. She spends quarrel after quarrel with nothing to show for the effort (but with plenty of fervent effort).</p><p>With a harsh new fury, Lilith enters the fray, too, and Ava can’t even question why she’s just <em>slashing</em> at throats, taking no quarter, with her <em>hands</em>, because this situation is too fucked already to introduce yet another wondering. She tears at the cheek of one of the Swiss Guard, splitting it right open, but it’s not enough because he gets her back in the ribs, folding her in two for just a second.</p><p>And those are her friends out there, fighting, not frozen. Her team, her family. Her family is fighting and she’s just standing there watching everything happen around her with hands that won’t work and a dizzy head. Helpless Ava. Seventeen steps back, after trying so hard, falling over herself in the retreat. What kind of leader doesn’t pull her own weight? It screams. There’s screaming all around her, too, echoing in the expansive hallway, every marble surface sending it back at her fourfold like an insult. Adriel is watching, too - Ava can see him standing there, but he’s in control, he’s commanding this, she’s commanding <em>nothing</em>, not even her own actions.</p><p>Beatrice all but floats past her, crouched, swift as a shadow, drawing a dagger from each boot, ready to face any enemy or fate, and Ava feels her tenuous hold on everything completely unravel.</p><p>Her thoughts are only partially her own. They’re echoing in her voice, but coming in piecemeal, scraps of an argument she doesn’t know how to have. Telling her to choose, to choose <em>now</em>. Choose to be here. Ava’s choosing to be here. She thinks she is. To trust her team, to fight, flight, fuck. No, fight. Stand, trust. How can she fight? They’re all fighting. Her eyes are blurry. Tears, or is she fainting? It’s up for debate. She doesn’t have the space to debate it.</p><p>Her gaze won’t leave Beatrice. Beatrice, jaw steeled, eyes wide with some potent mixture of concentration and concern as she lands decisive strike after decisive strike. Beatrice, slitting a throat and charging for another one of the demented bystanders. Beatrice, grabbed by the collar and pulled to the cold hard floor.</p><p>The Halo, it’s scalding, searing Ava inside and out. Thoughts border on disjointed. It hurts, she hurts, it’s burning her alive. Divinity, Divinium, damned. Her existence feels like all of them, like none of them. A martyr, cast into the role, willing or unwilling? She tries to cry out but there’s nothing in her chest. Eternity, or just now? Only now, only here, to stand, to not run. To face. Can she face? She feels the Halo throbbing, pulsing, like it’s going to rip itself from her body. Is it her body? She doesn’t know. Is it her spine, is it her hands wrapped in shaking fists around the sword’s handle? Is it her heart, beating so rapidly it feels like it’s not beating at all?</p><p>No, it’s none of that. It’s not her, it’s not <em>about</em> her. It’s her family, the one she just found, the one that’s just accepting her, being destroyed in front of her. And Ava doing nothing about it. It’s hysteria, it’s being a coward, it’s being rendered an empty shell again. It’s being helpless, helpless of the highest order. Camila takes a hard blow to the stomach, and is somehow still fighting, ripping spent bolts out of bodies and sending them into another. Beatrice spits out a mouthful of blood as she struggles to her feet again with a flurry of blade and fist. Lilith, also doused in red, turns and strikes, turns and strikes, eyes alight with hapless and futile ferocity.</p><p>Mary still hasn’t resurfaced.</p><p>The world is even scarier when she can see all the things in it, especially like this, seeing all things all at once. Seeing them like this.</p><p>And Ava is both crumbling and rooted to the spot. Adriel is watching her - she can feel his eyes, ruining her, igniting her.</p><p>But if she’s rooted to the spot, why aren’t her feet on the ground? She’s levitating. Fuck. She’s letting them down. Fuck, it hurts, it always hurts, but this time the hurt is like annihilation. It’s so much. It’s her burden, it’s Shannon’s burden, it’s Melanie’s burden, it’s the burden of every other Halo Bearer back to Areala herself. A false burden, a complete lie. But she’s somewhere in midair and her backbone is shattering and she’s coming apart. Her fibers are separating one by one. She’s becoming something she’s been forced to become, <em>no</em>, she’s <em>decided </em>to become, dragged there by her family, dragged there by all these fucking questions she’s trying to solve without knowing the language.</p><p>Air fills her lungs for the first time in what feels like years.</p><p>And hanging in that lack of gravity, Ava screams.</p><p>Screams in pain. Screams for Mary, for Camila, Lilith. For Beatrice. Screams in anger, anger coming from hate, wanting her own raging in a rainfall of blood. She screams in fear, screams for her mother, screams for that comforting touch her body has forgotten.</p><p>Screams for herself, for what she needs to do. For what she can’t change, for what she can choose.</p><p>Something cracks and a line is crossed. Ava moves through fear, past hatred, beyond pain. It comes in a reflection of Beatrice narrating from the book. The Halo arcs and releases a righteous blaze of salvation. Deliverance, a blast of bright and bold, rupturing through Ava’s hoarse howling and permeating the corridor, washing over every soul there, tainted and untainted alike. Sanctification, taking away the clamor, erasing the world’s sound.</p><p>In the sudden silence, suspended off the earth, Ava sees three things.</p><p>Ava sees the possessed halt, collectively stunned, rocked by some invisible percussive force, like some silent but violent clap of thunder ramming into and through them. They’re knocked back, limp as rag dolls, away from their crushing huddle over Mary’s body. Writhing scarlet effervesces from the crowd - the wraith demons are at once exorcised from their hosts, dissipating into oblivion, shrieking in that horrible way Ava can’t hear, but grates through every fragment of her bones.</p><p>Ava sees Adriel, observing everything with a fearfully calm expression before lifting his arms and casting himself away, sending himself somewhere else, and there’s a moment of confused panic that rampages through Ava at the thought of losing sight of him. It skirts on the surface of the pain, feeding into the roaring light.</p><p>And the last thing Ava sees as she feels the Halo’s energy run dry, feels that weakness in her core, in her limbs, in her being, is Beatrice.</p><p>Beatrice, turning, gazing up at Ava, amber eyes wide with adrenaline and awe, blood trickling from her lip and the cut on her cheek. The awe makes a discernible transformation into desperate concern. Sees Beatrice, in slow-motion, lunging towards the spot over which Ava is hovering, shouting, <em>shouting</em> like Beatrice never does, and though Ava is deaf to the world she knows the shout is a shout of her name.</p><p>And then Ava sees nothing but blackness as her body gives one final brutal jerk and then goes slack.</p>
<hr/><p>They manage to deliver Ava’s unconscious body from the Vatican in the shroud of all the chaos. Carried like Christ from Calvary - face to the frescoed ceilings, one leg hanging over each of Beatrice’s shoulders, Lilith cradling her arms and head. Camila leads their hasty exit, negotiating a clear path with her crossbow; as they emerge into the frenzied daylight, none of the frightened onlookers in St. Peter’s Square seems to pay them much mind, anyway, already too keyed up from the events of the last ten minutes to even register another oddity. What’s a few nuns in tactical gear carrying a listless body, in the face of <em>fumata bianca</em>, a new pope, and then a near-immediate explosion and building collapse - the ultimate <em>extra omnes</em>?</p><p>Breaking from the disorderly crowd, breathing hard, they stagger with the combination of rapid movement and Ava’s weight. It’s a blessing to find Mary, having gathered herself and sprinted ahead of the rest, already waiting (grim-faced and weary) with the van.</p><p>It takes less than fifteen seconds for them to pile up in the vehicle - Mary in the driver’s seat, Camila taking the passenger side, Lilith and Beatrice clambering into the back with Ava - and then Mary is hitting the accelerator, peeling out with abandon, each of them sending up silent <em>Paters</em>, <em>Glorias</em>, and <em>Aves</em> that they’ll find just <em>one</em> route out of Vatican City before the security blockades go up.</p><p>And in their state of bated breath, they somehow do. The world opens up to them, in all its abject confusion.</p><p>In silence, they assess their injuries. Mary keeps rubbing and twisting her neck. Camila holds her left-side ribs. Beatrice’s lip is numb, but her teeth are all intact. Lilith looks fine in the physical sense, but otherwise almost somewhere else entirely. They’re all tired, all sore, all covered in blood and anointed with harrowing cluelessness.</p><p>When Mary manages to put a few kilometers between the van and the epicenter, she’s the first to speak.</p><p>“What the <em>fuck</em> was that?”</p><p>It comes out much calmer than any of them feels. There’s something to say for numb shock. None comments on the language, because the meaning is held in solidarity.</p><p>“The Halo.” Lilith’s answer is just a murmur as she adjusts her position against the side of the rear compartment.</p><p>“No shit,” Mary scoffs, though it’s not meant specifically for Lilith. “It’s always the Halo. I meant, what the fuck was <em>any</em> of that.”</p><p>Just heavy silence, just the purring of the van’s motor drowning out everything else. Nobody knows, nobody utters a word.</p><p>Mary’s eyes flicker in the rearview mirror. “Is she alright?”</p><p>And Beatrice has to take a second of steadying breath, to blink and to swallow, before she can even fathom answering.</p><p>“She’s breathing.” Beatrice’s fingers twitch against Ava’s neck, near where her head is cradled in her lap. “Her pulse is fast. But she’s alive. Beyond that, I can’t tell.”</p><p>The wavering words hang between all of them for too long.</p><p>Ava doesn’t stir. And Ava is always stirring, always fidgeting, pure nervous excitement bubbling over. There’s always energy coursing through her body, understandable (if not irksome) after twelve years of dormancy.</p><p>This stillness isn’t Ava. This stillness is something wrong.</p><p>In some far corner of her mind, Beatrice tries to make sure her own lungs aren’t seizing. She just sees Ava levitating, head thrown back, screaming in some bone-chilling delirium nearing to exultation. And the light. The light is still piercing through Beatrice, making her hands throb, turning her nerves to trembling shreds<strong>.</strong></p><p>Her heart’s in her throat, her stomach bottoming out. And there’s no way it’s just the rush of the fight and the danger<strong>. </strong>There’s no way it means nothing, that any of it means nothing. The meaning of it is the shadowed problem. She’s afraid to move. Afraid to disturb her. Wants to shake her awake, but that would mean putting her hands on Ava, and sometimes Beatrice feels her hands and their wants aren’t to be trusted.</p><p>Mary lets out an aggressive sigh, passing another vehicle without a signal, keeping them moving forward even though they were directionless. “Fuck it. We can’t even worry about it right now. Right now we just need to fuckin’ get far away from here. Where’s the GPS?” Camila doesn’t hear her - her gaze is trained on the side mirror; she’s still clutching her weapon, looking ready to dive out the window and fire at any pursuers at the drop of a hat. “Hey! If you’re gonna ride co-pilot, I’m gonna need a little more attention and a little less trigger-finger.”</p><p>“Sorry, Mary!” Her apology wobbles as she’s yanked back to focus, fumbling in her combat habit for the correct device. “What am I putting in?”</p><p>“We can’t go back to Cat’s Cradle. Not now.” Lilith is the one to vocalize the leaden notion settling in their skulls, like a knee pressed to the backs of their necks. They can’t go home. Not with Duretti. Not with Father Vincent. Not with Adriel.</p><p>“Then where should we go?” Camila asks, softly, barely a breath.</p><p>And then their eyes are on Beatrice, three gazes intent on her either directly or reflected from ahead. Because all eyes are always on Beatrice at times like this - a desperate bid for strategy, for logic. A contingency plan, <em>every</em> contingency plan. The unrelenting demand of each next step.</p><p>But for all of Beatrice’s assertions, there are no contingency plans after blowing up the Vatican in the middle of conclave. There’s no strategy to grasp or formulate, because there’s absolutely no logic in any single haunting thing they just witnessed.</p><p>And while their eyes are on Beatrice, Beatrice’s eyes are on Ava.</p><p>Her hands are hovering around Ava’s head in her lap, so close but not touching, held in some awkward purgatory by the tumult in her own head, by the rush she felt the last time Ava was this close to her, bursting from the experimental stone wall. This lightness, its shaking hold, they’re dangerous, and her sisters are waiting for an answer.</p><p>When she says the only thought that manifests in her mind, it’s a blazing flaw on grand display.</p><p>“The Halo should have recharged by now.”</p><p>Her voice can’t go any smaller, and it feels like another wound, concealed in its cause but no less excruciating for it.</p><p>The locked jaw was preferable.</p><p>Mary sighs again, and probably not for the last time here. “Alright.” Drums her fingers on the steering wheel, nearly snarling before calming herself. “Okay. Camila, let me see that.”</p><p>Camila, now fully fixed on her task, hesitates. “You shouldn’t type and drive, it’s not safe.”</p><p>A half-hidden groan of frustration. “Not really worried about traffic laws right now. Nothing the fuck at all is safe. But fine. Just listen close.”</p><p>Camila carefully punches in the coordinates Mary recites.</p><p>“Where are we going?” she asks as the route calculates, eyes darting from sister to sister.</p><p>“Our little Tartessian paradise.” Mary at least remembers to use her turn signal this time as she whips around another car. “Just gotta lay low for a few days. Until we figure our shit out. Lord knows there’s a whole fucking lot of it now.”</p><p>Lilith clicks her tongue, finally seeming to snap back into her familiar self for a moment. “We’re going to hide from a horde of wraith demons in a village that had an <em>eruption</em> of them last year.” It’s a question that finishes flat, so not really a question at all, more of an incredulous mockery, using the villagers’ own language to prove her point.</p><p>Mary clicks her own tongue right back. “You got a better idea? Ava and I were just there. She used a damn side of beef to finish off the only one we saw. I’ll bet any stragglers think she’s too deranged to deal with.”</p>
<hr/><p>The GPS reports that the trip will take exactly twenty-four hours. The number seems somehow provident.</p><p>They can do it straight through if they drive in shifts - Mary, Camila, then Beatrice.</p><p>“Look,” Mary says, reaching back between the front seats to give Lilith’s arm a squeeze, “no offense intended, but with whatever you keep going in and out of, operating a vehicle or heavy machinery shouldn’t be too high on your to-do list.”</p><p>No offense is taken, either.</p><p>Beatrice’s fingers find Ava’s neck, her wrist, her pulse points. Her heart’s still beating. Beatrice’s heart races. It’s sweltering in the van and she has no idea how nobody else has commented or complained. She pulls down her headpiece, wants to claw at her sleeves, shivering as the air hits the sweat at the back of her neck.</p><p>She touches Ava’s hair, the tiny fine ones curling away at her temple, just once. None of the others see. The hidden act doesn’t burn her fingers but bites at something inside of her nonetheless. That light, that power, the Halo. Worthy, chosen. Beautiful. She can still see it now and her thoughts grind to a halt, knees shaking, making her glad she’s sitting.</p><p>Beatrice remembers Ava’s breathless smile and their mingling hands in the ArqTech lab and suddenly and stupidly feels <em>chosen</em>, too. Her fingers twitch, heart leaps. So full of dangerous, nameless yearning, mingled with icy apprehension. Full to brimming. She can’t brim.</p><p>Ava’s eyes need to open. Beatrice’s chest needs to lighten.</p><p>Mary merges left for the A1 and they’re speeding into the new and more daunting world, all on their own.</p><p>And staring at Ava’s deathly-still face, Beatrice is suddenly unsure of what will be found in its expanse.</p><p>(But her chest rises and falls. All of theirs do. A new day in question, but a new day nonetheless.)</p>
<hr/><p>At dusk, after hours of near-silent travel, finally almost out of Italy, Ava wakes once and briefly.</p><p>With the most minuscule moan imaginable, she stirs - a movement as slight as the sound from her throat. She cringes, gasps, eyes squeezing tight, brow creasing as she shudders and turns more fully into Beatrice, face pressing into her lap, and Beatrice might as well be immolated right there in that van.</p><p>But she still finds herself capable of cupping Ava’s upturned cheek, feeling the flush of her skin. She finds that her mouth works, too. She uses it. Her veins flood with cold, tingling relief, and for the first time she almost relaxes into Ava’s warm weight strewn across her legs. (Almost. <em>Fully</em> would be unacceptable.)</p><p>“Ava.” Near a whisper, but urgent - near a whisper, but tumbling from her mouth like a prayer. The others all look up abruptly from their headlight gazes, their separate-but-shared thoughts, sharing in the initial discharge of worry at Ava’s waking. “Ava, can you hear me? Can you say something?” Her tone is hard to govern. She keeps it as still as possible. It only quivers on “say.”</p><p>“<em>Ouch</em>,” Ava croaks. One slow hand fists blindly in the fabric of Beatrice’s skirts, just by where her the front of her thigh meets her hip, making it a lot harder for Beatrice to get air past the catch in her throat - but she does, because it’s what Ava needs (it’s what she needs, too).</p><p>“Where’s your pain?”</p><p>“Head.” Another wince at the exertion of using her voice. Her twisting grip tightens. So does Beatrice’s chest, stomach. “Eyes, back.”</p><p>“Rest,” Beatrice tells her, using a hand to shield Ava’s face from any bit of light that could possibly be irritating her. “We’re going someplace safe. You need to rest.” The repetition mirrors her thoughts’ circularity and it’s also the beginning of a lie of omission.</p><p>Ava can rest, but only for now.</p><p>And keeping up the trend of doing the <em>precise </em>opposite of anything asked of her, Ava opens her eyes. Weakly, at first, but then snapping to stark unsteady realization as they meet Beatrice’s, as she feels the motion of the van, as she recognizes she has no idea what’s going on. Beatrice’s hand rests firm on her forehead, a bold touch for the first time, keeping her from sitting up in panic. Beatrice can see each dislocated thought whipping behind her dazed eyes, barely focused, before one finally settles.</p><p>“Adriel. Gone?” She swallows at something thick. Her words are tumbling around out of order, but the meaning is simple. “Is he?”</p><p>Silence. Camila bites her lip and looks out the window into the blur of waning day. Lilith stares stone-faced at the van ceiling. Mary watches the road.</p><p>Of course, Beatrice is the one who has to answer through the tension, crushing her from both outside and within. Ava’s waiting, going pale, pupils dilated and disoriented.</p><p>“It’s...unclear.”</p><p>Ava licks her dry lips and heaves like she had known that would be the answer before she asked. It’s guilt, it’s helplessness, it’s everything she doesn’t deserve to feel and Beatrice can’t let her feel. Not now, not when they’re all alive.</p><p>“I don’t know what you did, but you did well.”</p><p>The reassurance doesn’t break through Ava’s stupor.</p><p>“S’Mary...” she slurs, eyes blinking and crossing, still overcome by exhaustion. She fights it; she’s still fighting, still contending with so much. She gives her head a shake against Beatrice’s thigh before drawing in a shaking breath and trying her question again. “Is Mary <em>dead</em>?”</p><p>The last word is a broken, quiet yelp none of them had expected.</p><p>“I’m right here, badass.” Mary’s eyes and a hint of a smile flash in the rearview. “Takes more than a couple of possessed civilians and clown-suits to take me out. You saw me go through that meat case, didn’t you? Though I appreciate Sleeping Beauty deciding to check in with her sisters.”</p><p>Beatrice’s stern hold keeps Ava from moving her head to look, but the sound of Mary speaking is enough to make Ava relax. “S’good.” She sighs and curls even more fully into Beatrice, probably still moving far out of her own cognizance, Beatrice notes, trying not to reel at all the spontaneous, unbidden contact, trying not to let her unruly body crave more.</p><p>Ava’s gaze rising and locking with hers is absolutely not helpful in that respect. Those eyes, dark and deep, heavy-lidded but suddenly just a little bit clearer. The eyes that disarmed her, and drew out those sharpest shattered pieces of herself that Beatrice had thought she was smart enough to keep close, keep invisible. So many cruel flaws exhumed in one dramatic upheaval, wrestled from her once-secure grasp by Ava’s eyes and Ava’s relentless questions.</p><p>No.</p><p>That’s not correct. Beatrice can admit when she’s wrong.</p><p>Ava’s eyes on her that day were impossibly kind and ridiculously encouraging. They were enough to let Beatrice share those flaws of her own volition. Not stolen, given. Her own yearning, to be known, to be seen as she is and nothing less.</p><p>And that is somehow more difficult to acknowledge than the former. <em>What you are is beautiful</em>. Ava’s beautiful too, right now, disheveled and drained, and recognizing it slices at Beatrice’s shadow.</p><p>Ava’s rasping voice anchors her back. To the world, to the van, to herself. To the heat their bodies are sharing.</p><p>“You’re okay, too. Bea.” Her face breaks with a small, drowsy smile. “Hi.”</p><p>The affectionate shortening of her name, falling so plainly from Ava’s curving lips, nearly does her in.</p><p>“We’re all here.” Beatrice doesn’t comment on the personal address, but allows herself to quickly tuck Ava’s hair behind her ear. It’s a dangerous indulgence which she regrets almost immediately - but it’s hard to ignore <em>or </em>regret as the touch deepens Ava’s contented expression. “We’re all alright.” She knows she’s speaking but everything sounds like it’s coming from somewhere far away - maybe back in Rome, or whispering from behind stone much thicker than eleven and a half dirra, or maybe reverberating from whatever dimension Adriel vanished into.</p><p>“Cool,” Ava exhales in a succinct whisper. She doesn’t have the capacity for much else, apparently. “Cool.”</p><p>“It was amazing, Ava!” Camila is, of course, the first among them to genuinely grin, turning around in her seat to look into the back of the van, and her spirited exclamation saves Beatrice from herself. “You were amazing.”</p><p>“Very strong,” Lilith agrees, quietly, but still truly.</p><p>“Yeah, you did the damn thing back there alright.” Mary nods and checks her zones before she changes lanes, hurtling past another set of headlights. “<em>Some</em> damn thing, at least.”</p><p>“Froze.” Ava flinches, shrugging against Beatrice. “Did the damn freeze.”</p><p>“No.” Beatrice risks another quick stroke of Ava’s hair - because it’s like she can’t stop herself, and she feels spite for how she’s out of control, but also shock at the way at least one sliver of it feels right. She sees Ava inhale, sees her lips twitch, sees her eyes flutter. “You fought harder than I’ve ever seen you fight. You fought for us.” It’s true. She broke through to some unknown state of power, and it was enrapturing.</p><p>“I tried.”</p><p>“You did more than try.”</p><p>Ava squints, and Beatrice’s focus veers to how the corners of her eyes crinkle. “What now?”</p><p>“We’re gonna figure that out together, Ava,” Mary promises. “All of us. If you weren’t stuck with us before, you really are now.”</p><p>“Now, rest.” Beatrice manages to find her voice and make it stern. “We have a long way to go and you’re trembling.”</p><p>Beatrice knows because she can feel it. She can feel it in the ridiculous way they’re pressed together. And the transfer of tiny vulnerable motions from body to body is paralyzing. It’s hunger incarnate, deep and demanding.</p><p>Given substantial permission, and at least a few partial answers, Ava’s eyes slip closed.</p><p>They remain that way as she speaks again, in a clumsy mumble.</p><p>“Softer than I thought.”</p><p>Beatrice swallows, tries to decide what to do with her hands. “Pardon?”</p><p>“You.” Ava shifts, settles, face pressed to the soft grooves of Beatrice’s combat habit. Her words are rapidly dwindling as returning sleep laps at her, already gliding into some incoherent dream. “Comfortable here.”</p><p>And Beatrice loses herself for just a second, blood surging, breath hitching. On fire, beneath her skin. Aching deep. The flawed wanting - the sheer wanting of a flaw.</p><p>Three pairs of eyes come to rest on the two of them and then quickly dart away. Mary’s linger for the longest.</p><p>Ava doesn’t notice the attention; she’s already gone slack again, breathing slowly, mind somewhere far away from their escape. There’s some measure of salvation in that - but there's no salvation in the burning in Beatrice's core.</p><p>Only the single hand holding onto Beatrice’s clothes stays tight.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Only Passing Through</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So I did the thing where I let this get away from me...note that this is going to actually be three parts now! (this idiot nun and her idiot Halo Bearer just like to talk to me OKAY?!)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>True nightfall envelops them just after they cross the border to France.</p>
<p>Not long ago, Camila’s fingers made a stealthy flutter to the control screen, switching from navigation to turn on the radio. They had probably been itching to do so for quite a while before they did. She had made sure the volume was low enough to avoid disruption, while still giving herself something to bob her head along with. The station it was tuned to is playing some hypnotic lo-fi electronic music that none of them know - but none of them has made any moves or murmured requests to change it or switch it off (not even Lilith requesting silence). It’s just <em>there</em>, a thrumming in the background, an up-and-down swirling to mingle with their silent, weary thoughts.</p>
<p>Because this isn’t some grand Southern European road trip. Not that Beatrice has ever been on one. Not a real one, at least, not without her family - parents driving, her quiet in the backseat with a book and her siblings. But this is nothing like the ones in the raunchy R-rated blockbuster movies her schoolmates would sneak into the dormitories. No rolled-down windows, no belting upbeat songs, no flat-tire hijinks. This isn’t even like a normal transit to a mission, where they would at least be reiterating strategy, speaking of contingencies, every so often throwing in an offhand remark, even sharing a laugh or two.</p>
<p>This is a certain kind of taciturnity. This is each Sister Warrior trying to digest the past twelve hours: the same events, but each contending with a separately-experienced facet. Eight hundred kilometers so far of connected disconnect, a shared sort of bewilderment.</p>
<p>Mary watches the road, eyes tight, sighing, switching her steering hand almost like clockwork (every two and a half minutes, just about). Lilith looks at her own hands, <em>stares</em> at her own hands, jaw clenched, like she doesn’t recognize them. Camila’s are on her knees, idly tapping out the trancelike beats flowing through the speakers.</p>
<p>Beatrice’s hands, though, are finally and gingerly settled on Ava’s sleeping body. And for that alone, she might be the most bewildered of them all.</p>
<p>And it both unsettles and soothes Beatrice, the way the darkness and the quiet-thumping bass turn the van into a world all of its own as they hurtle along the A8. It’s an odd feeling of being suspended somewhere uncertain. Somewhere between this life and the next. Every fundamental lie, every brutal falsehood, spirals around her, between all of them, bringing on the sensation of being banished from the Garden of Eden. They tasted of the fruit, they paid the price. Toil and sweat will follow. There’s no return to ignorant innocence, now.</p>
<p>And the heavy feeling of Ava still sprawled on her side, head in Beatrice’s lap, just makes all of this all the more surreal. Beatrice limits her cautious touch to the side of Ava’s head and her shoulder.</p>
<p>Neither has moved. Especially not Beatrice, despite the cramp in her legs and the way their body heat, amplified in the way it’s being shared, is making her sweat. To move would be to risk waking her. To wake her would be to pull her from whatever solaced state she’s floating through, all calm breathing and parted lips, hand still loosely grasping at Beatrice’s skirts. To wake her would be to disrupt the Halo, if it’s healing her or repairing itself or transforming into something else entirely, some culmination of millennia, like everything else in flux around them.</p>
<p>To wake her would be to open the air for a reticent reckoning. For tenuous recognition, for some hesitant words or even a full-blown <em>conversation</em> about the blatant way their bodies are clinging together. About Ava’s adamant grip, about Beatrice’s timid palms. And while Beatrice can shoulder plenty of crosses, that’s not one she’s excited to toss onto today’s pile.</p>
<p>So she just holds Ava instead. <em>Almost</em> holds her. For all her education, for each in her repertoire of skills, she doesn’t know how to do it fully.</p>
<p>Her arms, left by themselves, might know how.</p>
<p>But if she lets them try - and if they succeed - that’s at least another dozen and a half crosses to bear.</p><hr/>
<p>Despite the way it feels, minutes pass as they chisel away at the distance holding them from their destination - kilometer by kilometer, unfamiliar song by unfamiliar song, heartbeat by heartbeat. (Beatrice’s disobedient body is using a lot of those, stunned at having another huddled so close.)</p>
<p>And if time’s being measured in heartbeats, it can be measured in passing headlights, too. The intermittent streaks of illumination are the only entity that manage to infiltrate this in-between, obscure world.</p>
<p>The lights coming close just sharpen every shadow. As they pass, they cast a ruthless beacon onto all of Beatrice’s flaws. Everything abnormal, everything unacceptable, every box she tried but failed to comfortably inhabit. They threaten to reveal her shaking hands and the sirens in her spine, singing for her to hold tighter, to let her hands do what they want, to use her mouth to speak or to do any number of impious and verboten things.</p>
<p>Streaking spotlights, all over her crown of thorns. A mockery. Pain when it was placed on her head, pain every time it’s jostled. Pain as <em>she</em> partially removes it herself, dismantling in front of a near-perfect stranger in some half-blasphemous scientist’s study. Now, that same near-perfect stranger is lying in her lap. The trickling blood at her temples, her forehead, is at once a weakening and a release.</p>
<p>Her stigmata are showing. Beatrice should hide her hands.</p>
<p>Her hands are on Ava.</p>
<p>But even faced with the washed-out arranging of her flaws, Beatrice still waits for the lights. When she hears a vehicle approaching, she holds her breath, focuses. They hit, they illuminate, and she can see Ava’s chest rising and falling, brilliantly alive. She can see her eyelashes, count her faint freckles. See her, and remember the last time they were in the back of this van, and that blood-soaked smile that leaped straight into Beatrice’s bones. See her, and remember <em>what you are is beautiful</em>. See her, and remember <em>what scares me is being alone</em>.</p>
<p>Beatrice won’t let Ava be alone. She isn’t alone now, even though the closeness is splintering, tearing Beatrice in two with both wanting and wanting to hide.</p>
<p>Because while the sporadic bursts of headlights whipping past show all of these things, it’s the darkness between that begins to feel more daunting. In the dark, everything imperfect has cover. And in this place, Beatrice doesn’t know what her eternal soul is. Or what it needs for salvation. Or what it needs salvation from.</p>
<p>All Beatrice knows is that there is so much she <em>wants</em>. And this sort of want brings about sin, and also stems from it - a self-perpetuating cycle that she’s been fighting since she was told it was something to fight.</p>
<p>Today, there’s almost been too much <em>fight</em>. And in the darkness, under Ava’s warmth, she doesn’t have to muster it.</p>
<p>Beatrice wants. So much. Just now, with a rush of adrenaline, she lets herself, even though peering into her own darkness makes her shudder.</p>
<p>She wants to tell Ava that, despite every new haunting unknown, she’s proud of her. She’s said it before, but she can say it again, differently, in any number of tones, words, even entire languages, until it’s enough.</p>
<p>She wants Ava to know that she’s not used to not thinking clearly, not used to wandering, not used to floundering for solid ground. But it’s been getting worse for the past several weeks.</p>
<p>She wants Ava to know about how she snapped her ankle on a bad breakfall during an aikido match when she was fifteen. How the way it kept her from training, stole away her method of sublimation, nearly ruined her. How she hasn’t <em>really</em> spoken to her siblings in years, how she doesn’t <em>really</em> know their growing families. She wants Ava to know her name, her true name, the one her parents gave her, the one that took away her original sin - before she took her vows, took on the burden of her flaws, an all-new sin.</p>
<p>How she tried so hard to make sense to everyone else that she doesn’t make sense to herself.</p>
<p>Beatrice wants to say <em>what you are is beautiful, too</em>. Because Ava is, flaws and all. <em>Thoughtless, self-centered.</em> She’s not even so sure about either of those anymore. But she’s certain that they’re both flawed.</p>
<p>And though she doesn’t know how to hold her closer, she wants to try. In the dark, she <em>can</em> try.</p>
<p>Her throat tightens as she does.</p>
<p>Two simple shifts. The hand on Ava’s head slips carefully under it, to cradle it. Ava doesn’t wake, but sighs, leans into the contact. The one on her shoulder slides to her back, to the spot where the Halo lies, and Beatrice can feel her breathing, swears she can feel its warmth.</p>
<p>And Beatrice pulls her in.</p>
<p>Her mind blurs. It’s like a root connection taking hold. It’s like a righteous act of defiance, a tiny break in the cycle, there in the dark. Her heart beats along with the quietly hypnotic bassline filling the spaces between all of them. She feels herself smiling, just a small but uncontrolled curl of her lips, without realizing it.</p>
<p>Then, a thought, surprising and nearly-intrusive.</p>
<p>As she pictures Ava the way she was at the Vatican - suspended above, crying out, Halo absolutely ablaze, all violent benediction - she wonders: are her flaws defined by God, or those around her?</p>
<p>Half an instant later, Mary accelerates into a tunnel, bathing the van and its passengers in harsh fluorescence. Wincing from the sudden light, Beatrice realizes how she’s now embracing Ava for all to see, but the cold panic freezes her too much to correct it. To become acceptable again. Guilt slithers into the panic like something foul. She can only steel herself for the shocked stares, the scandal, the chastising, the pure scorn.</p>
<p>But none of it comes.</p>
<p>Mary watches the road. Lilith glances over at them, squinting from the light, then just looks back at her hands. Camila hums along with the music, so softly.</p>
<p>Beatrice breathes, somehow.</p>
<p>Their van exits the tunnel and they’re drowned in night again.</p><hr/>
<p>They make a brief stop in Montpellier at 0100 for three reasons.</p>
<p>First, Mary has finally reached the tail end of her tolerance for driving, having already done more of her equal share (but nobody was willing to fight with her over it). Camila, having slept for a few hours in the passenger seat, is ready to take over.</p>
<p>Second, a dire need for gasoline. They find an all-hours fuel station just off the A9.</p>
<p>Third, there’s a McDonald’s right across from the fuel station. And though none is truly hungry, all need to eat. And it’ll do.</p>
<p>Mary, Camila, and Lilith all but stumble out of the van, stretching their legs, fueling up, using the restroom, getting food. But very cautiously, one at a time, and only after shedding their overclothes - it’s a hard fact that their combat garb is not inconspicuous. And if, God forbid, Interpol has a Red Notice out on them, a McDonald’s run might be the most disappointing possible reason to be apprehended.</p>
<p>Beatrice stays in the van, with Ava.</p>
<p>When they’re all finished, they shuffle seats. Mary climbs into the back with Beatrice. Even before she speaks, Beatrice can see that she’s moved beyond aggressive confusion to some chillingly-calm state of accepting all the absurdity with Adriel, with Father Vincent, with the whole Church in general. It’s something that Beatrice wouldn’t have expected. But it still somehow doesn’t shock her. Maybe they’ve all moved through to that same numb state. And Mary is adept at charging forward.</p>
<p>“<em>Bon appétit</em>.” She holds out an already-greasy paper bag to Beatrice as she settles where Lilith had been. When she glances at Ava, and sees her still hard in slumber, her volume drops. “The finest French cuisine, all yours. No pickle. Fair warning, I didn’t check, so if there’s pickle, you’re gonna have to just scrape the damn things off.”</p>
<p>Beatrice reaches for it, careful not to shift too much with the action. Her trapped legs scream, but Ava is comfortable. She had said so. “Thanks. I’m sure it’s fine.”</p>
<p>As Camila merges back onto the highway, Mary leans back against the side of the van and takes a bite of her burger. “<em>Fuck</em>.” She swallows and shakes her head in disbelief. “I know this is trash. But it’s so good. How does this taste so damn <em>good</em> after that bullshit we just witnessed? It’s not right.”</p>
<p>“I think you’re just hungry,” Beatrice points out, trying her own burger. No pickle. It’s already heavy in her stomach, like a rock, but she knows she needs it. “We haven’t eaten in...quite a while.” She doesn’t want to do the math.</p>
<p>“Yeah, you’re not wrong.” Mary shrugs, going for a handful of fries this time. “Guess it’s just bizarre that I’m actually <em>enjoying </em>it, y’know? Everything’s so fucked up. But hey, we’ve got McDonald’s.” She lifts her burger in a morbid <em>cheers</em>.</p>
<p>“<em>McDo</em>,” Beatrice murmurs absently, accent and all, and then wishes it hadn’t been an automatic reaction. It’s no wonder her dossier reads the way it does. “It’s called <em>McDo</em> around here.”</p>
<p>Mary chuckles in a way that makes it seem like she should’ve seen that one coming. But her laugh only carries about half its usual humor. “Alright, private school, thanks.” She shakes her head again, then tosses it at Ava, seeming unconcerned by the way Beatrice is holding her. Like it’s actually the most normal thing she’s seen in hours. “How’s she doing?”</p>
<p>Beatrice glances down at Ava’s face, silhouetted by the highway’s midnight darkness. “The same. Just sleeping, rather deeply. Whatever the Halo did took a lot out of her, much more than usual.”</p>
<p>“Not surprised. That was some crazy shit. Shannon never levitated like that.” This fact keeps coming up, and Beatrice knows it must be important. But while they all saw Ava levitating, Beatrice thinks she was the one to see the heartbreaking terror in her eyes as she did. The one to see her begin to fall along with the dissipation of the Halo’s light. The one to ease her descent, cushioning the impact with her own body, the first time Ava was in her arms that day, spent and weary. (And how she has been ever since.)</p>
<p>Beatrice thinks of all these things, but just nods in reply. “I know.”</p>
<p>“I guess I’m just shocked she’s not waking up at the smell of these fries,” Mary comments, eyebrows raised, eating another. “Girl loves to eat. Do you think it’s normal? The not waking up, not the loving to eat.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know.” Sometimes Beatrice doesn’t have all the answers. “I hope so. We’ll just have to see.” So much uncertainty. Faith is her business, and faith is blind by its nature, but that doesn’t change the fact that blindness can be petrifying. She sighs, feeling it shake on the pull-in and push-out. “I’ll save mine for her, if she does wake. I don’t think I can stomach them right now, anyway.”</p>
<p>Silence falls over them as they both eat, and that’s fine. There’s no need to enumerate everything they don’t know, everything from today that’s going to haunt them for however long. They listen to the music, and to Camila and Lilith chatting quietly in the front seat. Camila is (unsurprisingly) doing most of the chatting, asking questions about the village, since she was just a brand-new recruit during all the awfulness they faced there. Lilith hands her chicken nuggets and gives her brief (but not irritated) answers, both one by one. And some of this feels so abnormally normal that it makes Beatrice reel.</p>
<p>(Most of the <em>some</em> is still Ava’s closeness.)</p>
<p>And then she wants to say something to Mary - something she doesn’t know the origin of, but something that needs to be said. A penance, of sorts. She hopes it’s coming out of her eloquently as she speaks.</p>
<p>“I'm aware that you spent a lot of time and exasperation chasing after her. I also see how hard it must be to have a new Halo Bearer, and to not have Shannon. It’s been hard for all of us.” Shannon left a rift in all of them, one that still aches with the emptiness of remembering. “But you had more faith in Ava than I did, and you were right to. She didn’t run this time, she fought. She’s still here.” She’s in Beatrice’s arms, in Beatrice’s lap. Beatrice should have had more faith.</p>
<p>With that, Mary’s shoulders relax for the first time since she broke off for the Basilica.</p>
<p>“She is,” she confirms, simply. “You’re here too, not chilling in that Malaysian convent. Bet part of you wishes you were.” Absolutely no part of Beatrice wishes that, but she doesn’t voice it, as it’s following a sharp sort of sarcasm. “Lilith is here, too, and <em>that </em>sure freaks me the fuck out. And me - I’m right with all of you, not posted up on some white-sand beach in Bora Bora, like I could be. Though I don’t suggest that anyone offer me that choice at this very moment.” She smirks. “We’re all here. And that has to mean something. It <em>does</em> mean something.”</p>
<p>Beatrice bows her chin in silent agreement. It does mean something. They’re a family. She couldn’t leave her family. Not this one.</p>
<p>Mary goes on without Beatrice expecting her to, tired eyes softening in just the slightest way, probably as much as her eyes really can right now. “And yeah, Ava proved me right. But I’m one for three, lately. Lilith proved me wrong, and so did you.” Beatrice feels even more confusion rise, feels her eyes narrow against it. Mary goes on. “You do care more about your Sisters than your Church. You blew up the Vatican for them. That’s pretty definitive.” A pause. “But I <em>did</em> still get us that damn van. Consider us even?”</p>
<p>Mary’s smirk becomes a grin. Beatrice smiles too, and though it’s a weak smile, it doesn’t mean any less.</p>
<p>Tossing her now-empty McDonald’s bag aside, Mary stretches, yawns, rubs at her shoulder and her face. “Alright. I’m about to crash. You should too, Bea. You’re driving next.”</p>
<p>“I know. I’ll be fine.” Truth is, she only dozed for a moment or so thus far. Unlike Ava’s sprawling, apparently, her position doesn’t exactly exude <em>sleep</em>. She’s got the growing crick in her neck to prove it. “I don’t want her to be alone.” The words escape, unruly and wild, a private moment exposed. Her voice is tight around them, but there’s no swallowing them back up after they hit the air.</p>
<p>And Mary must sense some or all of that in the stumbled answer. Yet another thing Beatrice doesn’t know. But it doesn’t matter. “Pretty sure I could sleep dangling off a cliff right now. I can play pillow for a while, if you wanna get more comfortable.”</p>
<p>“I’m fine here.” And Beatrice suddenly feels selfish, but it’s a paradoxical sort of selfishness, conflating her own interest with the interest of another. Is it <em>coveting</em> if she just doesn’t want to let go, doesn’t want to lose the warmth, doesn’t want to lose Ava’s hand still in her clothes? “Thank you, though.”</p>
<p>“Fine there, with her.”</p>
<p>Just a fragmented statement after a moment’s pause - a quick expansion of Beatrice’s words. The two extra words hit Beatrice’s system without mercy. A flaw, maybe seen, maybe called into rational existence. She feels Ava breathing against her, regular, slow, hypnotizing. It's a stark contrast between inside and outside.</p>
<p>Mary blinks at her, at <em>them</em>, expression neutral, expression normal. But it’s still so unreadable, and it feels in some way like curious scrutiny, but also simply like being looked at as something new. The agonizing state of being seen raw, as herself.</p>
<p>“I get it. I know you need something to focus on.”</p>
<p>Beatrice can’t forget that Mary knows her Sisters well.</p>
<p>Mary shifts, then, reclining on her back, resting her head on one of their packs, throwing both hands under as well. She takes a deep breath, and with the way she was talking, the exaggerated words she was using, Beatrice expects her to be snoring in a matter of moments.</p>
<p>So it’s surprising when that doesn’t happen.</p>
<p>“Hey, Bea.”</p>
<p>Beatrice glances over. Mary’s eyes are still open, gazing at the van ceiling, nearly gazing through it. They look far away, at least. Her voice, too, seems like it, barely audible over the soft ethereal electronic music still coming through the speakers. (Nobody’s changed the station. They’ve grown used to it, like a crutch.)</p>
<p>“Yes?”</p>
<p>“It sounds pretty damn dumb to say this out loud, because I don’t think anyone doesn’t realize it.” Mary sighs. “The Halo is a burden too great for one person to bear. I know it, you know it, we all know it. We’ve all seen it, over and over.” Another beat, like she’s fighting something, like she’s deciding whether or not to go on. And then decides in the affirmative. “So every Halo Bearer needs someone looking out for them. And if you ask me, Ava’s pretty lucky that her someone is apparently you. You need to keep a good eye on her, okay?”</p>
<p>And there’s something left unsaid there - something left in the clouded corners. But Beatrice can’t tease it out. Not with the way Mary’s words have made her heart pound, or the way she can’t feel her hands. Or maybe all she <em>can</em> feel is her hands - the parts that are on Ava - and the rest of her what's actually numb. It’s unclear, but just for the moment, <em>unclear</em> has to be an acceptable state of being.</p>
<p>“Now try to keep it down over there. I’m gonna get some shut-eye. Gonna try to be refreshed enough to take over your turn at the wheel. Stay with her. You always take care of us - here’s some payback.”</p>
<p>And Beatrice is grateful for the offer. She’s also thankful that, with Mary, with any of her Sisters, her gratitude can be silent. She’s not sure if she can speak.</p>
<p>She just keeps looking at Ava. Keeps her hand on her back, over the Halo.</p>
<p>Mary’s looking at her from the corner of her eye. Again, her voice is quiet. But this time, it’s not laden, just gentle.</p>
<p>“You know we love you, right, Bea? Always.”</p>
<p>Beatrice trembles and tries to think of a way to answer. In her mind, she sees them all together, in photographs, her and Lilith and Mary, laughing, joking, strong and steadfast, and Shannon, too, and then Camila. Her family, her home, flaws and all. The one she could never leave. The one she fought against herself to keep.</p>
<p>She needs to say something back. And there’s so much inside that she can’t draw out a single strand.</p>
<p>But there are always statements to fall back on - words that mean so many things, that mean everything, that means all of the answers at once.</p>
<p>“And I love you, too. In this life and the next.” She changes one of the words to make it feel more correct. Her voice quivers.</p>
<p>Mary rolls her eyes, shakes her head, but keeps smiling through both. “In <em>this</em> life.”</p><hr/>
<p>The next time they stop to switch drivers, Beatrice can’t ignore the call of nature any longer.</p>
<p>Extricating herself from the tangle with Ava is a reluctant feat of patience and contortion. All of her grace and mobility aren’t helpful when both of her legs are filled with pins and needles. But the endeavor is successful nonetheless, as she delicately (and with a pang of loss) eases Ava’s slumbered body to the floor.</p>
<p>The grasping hand was the last part to be wrestled away.</p>
<p>Ever efficient, Beatrice makes quick work of sorting herself, finally freeing herself from her oppressive overclothes. The dawn air is a balm for her scorching skin as it sweeps over her arms, now left bare by her training shirt. Her lower body feels much less constricted with one less layer of clothing.</p>
<p>(It’s missing Ava’s weight, though.)</p>
<p>When she’s fully relieved and hops into the back of the van, Camila is already there, resting in the spot from which Mary has just dragged herself. Ava, of course, hasn’t moved, and it’s becoming more and more normal to see her so motionless. Peaceful, though it’s a peace that can’t last. Peace just for the moment, in this in-between.</p>
<p>Beatrice nods at Camila and then sits. And then itches. Her hands, her head, her heart, everywhere. She wants - she wants to return to how it was.</p>
<p>Her unskilled hands brush along Ava’s shoulder blades. Her nervous arms hoist at Ava’s relaxed upper half, gingerly pulling her back into place across her legs. Ava responds through her sleep, eyes and mouth twitching, letting out a quiet and mindless groan as she cuddles close to Beatrice again. The new and overwhelming skin-to-skin, in the absence of Beatrice’s sleeves, transforms this even more. It’s another bit of timber for Beatrice’s pyre - she’s already burning. She’s been burning, she won’t stop burning until she’s a pile of ashes. Made from dust, returning to dust.</p>
<p>As Ava stills, Beatrice feels Camila’s eyes. With a deep breath, steeling herself for any reaction, she raises her eyes to return the gaze.</p>
<p>And she finds Camila smiling. The smile Camila always wears, the one that crinkles at her nose and the corners of her eyes. Bright, full of care, anticipatory, despite everything. All things Camila.</p>
<p>“Ava’s right,” she says, nodding and shrugging in one heaving, bubbly gesture. “That does look cozy. I’m sure she appreciates it wherever she is, Bea.”</p>
<p>Punctuating her observation with a soft humming noise and a twitch of her eyebrows, Camila lounges back against the makeshift pillow.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. You're on the Road Less Taken</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm pointing at the chapter count without comment. (I have lost control.)</p><p>Also, this chapter is a little lighter, as a treat. Heavier in the next (and final). (Yes, the next will actually be the final.)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And it’s just like Ava to finally wake exactly twenty-three hours and forty-four minutes into the journey.</p><p>When she does, it feels almost like a deliberate decision to do so. A pull from perdition.</p><p>The choppy momentum of the van climbing the winding hillside road brings her around. Her faraway blank mind (or, just <em>maybe</em>, her searching soul) lets her catch a tether to all the swaying and jostling; it crosses, then, with the rest of her body, sinking into a tentative, dizzy union with herself. With the Halo. With her body - weightless for an instant before sensation comes back from across the divide. Her limbs. She remembers them, remembers that she has them. Remembers, in a trickle of clarity that comes careening through the haze, that she can use them.</p><p>Before Ava even attempts to open her eyes, she uses them. To prove it.</p><p>Her legs shift and bend, muscles stiff and sore but mobile, listening to her mind’s indistinct command. Connected. She breathes, she senses warm closeness. Her arms, her hands and fingers. They’re connected too, inside, but also outside, to something else, to something resilient that’s keeping her here. <em>Here</em>, not floating alone in the vast emptiness from which she just heaved herself.</p><p>So Ava holds onto it more tightly. Blindly, and only for a split second, to confirm more connection. To testify her presence in wordless revelation. She’s here, she’s not alone.</p><p>And then she lets go.</p><p>(And Ava has no way of knowing it, but Beatrice is the one to coil inside at the releasing.)</p><p>“<em>Shit</em>.” It’s all she can croak out, but that seems to say it all. Sitting up is an entire task she’s not ready for. Ava manages to at least turn from her side to her back in a slow, heaving lurch, slumping against whatever’s pillowing her head. Her throat is so parched she’s surprised the word even comes out; trying to swallow after she says it makes her want to gag.</p><p>It seems bright out there. She rubs at aching eyes she still hasn’t opened, needing another second to push against the throbbing in her head. But that doesn’t matter, because she can feel the collective reaction to her stirring without the need to see it. It’s tangible, like every bit of air being sucked out and held there, trembling, before it’s allowed to rush back in with even more force. A gasp of release, all at once.</p><p>(And not a soul calls her out for the language.)</p><p>“Ava!” Camila’s voice, first, she recognizes as it echoes through her skull once, twice, equal parts serious and elated.</p><p>Another, then. Quiet and calm. A statement of fact, not perky jubilation, but with a palpable measure of relief. “She’s coming around.” Lilith. <em>You’re one of us</em>, Ava hears again. She would smile but she’s pretty sure her mouth can only twitch.</p><p>“She’d better be. Right on time.” Mary, unmistakable, words full of teasing, aware that Ava is listening. “I’m not trying to haul her ass into <em>or </em>out of this van ever again in my life. Halo Bearer was about to get dumped right onto the ground after we park.”</p><p>This time, Ava does try to smile. And it feels odd, both the trying to and the desire to. So flippant, almost profane, after the happenings at the Vatican, which are starting to come back to her in cold flashes of stop-motion chaos. She shoves feebly at the shuddering images and tries to smile all the same. A halfway-pass at one might make it across her face, lopsided and weird, right cheek pulling up with no lack of effort.</p><p>“S’better than off a cliff.” She’s slurring like she’s drunk. But that’s okay, because with her eyes closed against the light, Ava can hear Mary’s reaction. Not exactly a laugh, just a slightly-more-forceful-than-normal exhalation through her nose.</p><p>That’s also okay, because the reaction can exist, and because it can be heard.</p><p>This isn’t Ava’s sickbed and this isn’t her tomb - she’s not trapped alone for millennia to come behind twenty feet of stone, surrounded on all sides, looming over her, flowing in. No. She’s here, there’s light, she’s here with everyone.</p><p>With everyone.</p><p>There should be another, a fourth voice. One Ava’s used to hearing incredibly close and clearly, snug against her eardrum, coaxing her to pull herself together through any amount of mid-phase panic. Making promises. Boils, heads in bags, other totally morbid shit. <em>Never leave you</em>. She wouldn’t, not now, Ava thinks. Planning, always coherent and succinct. Smart, <em>so</em> smart, like, scary-smart. In Latin, French, probably at least three others, it’s ridiculous. A stupid pun, a thing, <em>their </em>thing? Breathless, raw. But only sometimes. Only once. Twice, maybe, but Ava was also breathless for that second time. In private, trusting, for Ava.</p><p>Trust. That’s another one. Her wobbly brain latches onto it. Ava’s not used to being trusted.</p><p>Not <em>really</em> trusted, anyway. Not as someone with the agency to act on any kind of trust placed in her. Outside of all that egocentricity, reaching beyond being a child, peering over her own ledge, seeing beyond herself. Looking past her own scars - some she’s never even explored yet, car-crash traces. Looking past the perfectly-circular scar on her back. It’s not about her. They all have scars. Maybe a few more after the Vatican. These new ones are shared.</p><p>Ava’s trying to trust her team. She’s trying to trust herself. To hold the full worth of that trust in clumsy hands that spent twelve years useless - to hold the weight of the world in clumsy hands that have never held much at all. And it’s fucking hard. Trust is everything.</p><p>But her mind’s wandering. Rambling even in half-consciousness, great. Stuff (her arms, her thoughts) still feels heavy. Circles back around, then: the fourth voice. Its silence is a noted absence, and the need to look for it streams through her system. Ava draws in one big breath, ribs feeling tight - gets ready for the imminent headache, and opens her eyes.</p><p>The light floods in, but it doesn’t hurt.</p><p>Or maybe it does. Ava is distracted.</p><p>Because she just sees Beatrice’s face coming into focus, gazing down at her with attentive concern. So much closer that Ava would have expected, yet not as close as they’ve been before - some strange middle distance. Her ragged synapses struggle with the extra empty space; it feels tender, biting, like a bruise. There’s a bruise on Beatrice’s cheek, there’s a busted lower lip, tired eyes, the beginnings of dark circles underneath. Every unfamiliar mark is a reminder of the fucked up Vatican shit at which Ava is throwing elbows to keep very far away from wherever <em>here</em> is.</p><p>It’s not so hard to keep at bay, though. Not during the seven to ten seconds of frozen <em>staring</em> between them. Ava’s sluggish head strikes a root connection.</p><p>Lots of weird patterns, too many. This is the third time Ava’s been some degree of incapacitated in the back of a van. It’s also the third time she’s woken up from the deepest, most dreamless sleep imaginable - like leaving the world entirely. Once more completely than the others.</p><p>It’s the <em>second</em> time she’s broken from that void to see a nun hovering over her.</p><p>And despite the lingering tremors from the wraiths, from Adriel, and from how Ava felt every ounce of her control over herself and her hold on reality slipping away before she blacked out - this couldn’t be more different from the first.</p><p>This isn’t a tiny heart pounding, panicked, lost, crying out for her mother’s comfort: <em>why can’t I move my body</em>. Ava clenches her fists to check, one more time. <em>You’re a very lucky little girl; you’re in my care, now</em>. Haunting, nauseous. Not lucky then. Maybe lucky now. There’s care here, surrounding her on all sides, occupying her space - she can feel it. There’s care in Beatrice’s exhausted eyes.</p><p>This is like an arrow ripped from her chest. This is phasing out of twenty feet of ArqTech concrete, collapsing onto a sterile floor, embraced, guided, touched. Breathless. This is breaking the surface of the water after a not-so-graceful dive, being pulled up for air - but calm, ready, not thrashing and fucking shrieking. Sweetness filling her lungs, keeping her vision clear.</p><p>But Ava still can’t swim, and she and Beatrice are both still staring.</p><p>And then a thought, surprising and nearly-intrusive: Ava had spoken truthfully when she told Beatrice that she was beautiful.</p><p>Another, right after: this is all of those things that just flickered through, and it’s also potentially pretty fucking awkward.</p><p>Ava sits up all at once and regrets it immediately.</p><p>“Oh, <em>God</em>.” With a full-body wince, she shatters a commandment. “<em>Jesus</em>!” Twice. “Fuck.” Definitely overkill, but she’s earned some dramatics. At least she can still speak.</p><p>As Ava shoots upright, Beatrice’s hand comes to the middle of her back. Spontaneously and with full-palmed abandon, first, then darting away - only to return pulsebeat later, more hesitantly, just fingertips. Through the dizzy surge of pressure in her skull, Ava feels all three pieces of the pattern with distinction.</p><p>“Ava. Don’t move too quickly.” A soft but decidedly stern command. Yep, Beatrice is good. The voice is back. It’s just a little weary, and breathless around her name. Ava thinks her own voice would be breathless, too. “Are you alright? What are you feeling?”</p><p>“Feeling like I got hit by a truck,” she croaks, rubbing at her eyes, trying to draw the stinging out. Oh, but she <em>has</em> been hit by a truck, just recently, in fact. And this actually doesn’t feel very similar to that at all. The comparison is still kinda legitimate. Matter of speech, simplicity’s sake. No need to overthink it. “But, like, really?” Beatrice’s fingertips brush against her, featherlight. “Besides that, I think...I think I’m okay?”</p><p>Some parts feel okay. And she doesn’t know why. She’s still coming around. But she’s also not complaining. This specific unknown goes in the <em>good</em> column, and there aren’t too many of those. Check one for Ava.</p><p>The van hits a particularly rough bump in the windy, ascending road, and Ava jolts with the sudden impact. The full palm returns. Some parts feel more okay, and hey, <em>that’s</em> a little weird, but Ava’s becoming accustomed to having more questions than answers. She asks the most obvious.</p><p>“Where, uh. Where are we?” She is a gap in time personified - a walking, taking <em>what did I miss, guys</em>? It feels derisive but there’s no better way to ask.</p><p>“About five miles outside of your favorite village.” Mary navigates another bump, keeping the bounce to more of a minimum than the last. “I called ahead, told them to lock the butcher’s shop. Ava’s coming back, gird your pork loins.”</p><p>It comes in flashes of cognition. Village. Mateo, Father Orozco. Rome. Father Vincent, Adriel. She swallows hard. “Okay. Okay, wait. That means…” She considers it for a second, but is <em>not</em> ready to do any kind of math yet. Another curve in the road, and she’s just a little queasy. “How long was I <em>out</em>?”</p><p>The others all look at each other. Except Beatrice. Her gaze stays locked on Ava. On Ava’s eyes. Beatrice’s look much lighter in the afternoon (maybe? What time is it? Time seems to have lost meaning in the van) sun coming through the windows. Her hand is still on Ava’s back, now at the small of it, having slipped lower.</p><p>But Camila is the one to answer, there next to them. The reluctant mildness of her voice only takes a morsel of the shock away.</p><p>“It’s been nearly twenty-four hours.”</p><p>Oh, shit.</p><p>“Oh, shit.”</p><p>Brain and mouth as one. At least that connection is strong as normal, too strong, sometimes no boundary between them at all.</p><p>“A day. I was knocked out for an entire day? That’s...isn’t that like, kind of a coma? Like at least some qualifier for one?” And here her heart starts to pound, <em>fast</em>, freaking out j<em>ust a little</em>, and it’s the first time that’s happened since she woke up and it doesn’t feel very great on her too-tight head. “I was in a coma?”</p><p>“You weren’t comatose, Ava.” Beatrice leans in, forcing Ava’s eyes into focus, voice heavy with that baffling urgent calmness. “You were only asleep. You need to calm down. You don’t look-”</p><p>Ava’s throat clenches as she tries to control her volume. “How do you know?” Tries to not sound pathetic, but stammers just a little. She shouldn’t be panicking, not over this, not when there are at least <em>several</em> other things to panic about. But time still exists, it still means something, even if it doesn’t feel like it here, and she’s already lost so much time. Captive in a bed, captive inside her own body. Being spoon-fed. Running away, from everything. Being selfish. “How do you <em>know</em>?” she repeats, smaller than the first time, somehow hushed instead of shouted from the dread billowing from her chest.</p><p>Beatrice’s hand flits from Ava’s back to her cheek. A lapse, vacillation. Time’s funky, here. Another tether established. Some of the frantic chemical firings zooming from her brain, through her spine, all the way to her fingers and toes <em>chill out,</em> just in the slightest way. And Ava notices how Beatrice’s soothing hand trembles, just a little, though her expression remains straight and intent. “<em>Ava</em>, I know,” she says, and Ava already half-believes her. “Settle. I know. Trust, remember? I know.”</p><p>At the end of the litany of the <em>I knows</em>, it hits Ava. A multi-step realization: the way she woke up, and the feeling of close resilience. An earlier burst of twilight, fuzzy and fleeting - her tongue, feeling like used-up gauze, mumbling something nearly-incoherent about comfort.</p><p>Oh.</p><p>She <em>knows</em>.</p><p>“Was I…” She laughs, humorless, flustered, before going wide-eyed. “Was I sleeping on you the <em>whole time</em>?”</p><p>And this time, Beatrice doesn’t have the words. She tries to make them, opening her mouth once, twice, without sound. Her hand falls from Ava’s face to her own lap, folding over the other, gripping a bit more tightly than is probably necessary. The tongue-tied gaze is shared for just a moment, before Beatrice controls her face. If Ava had blinked, she would have missed it. Ava isn’t really blinking.</p><p>“Just about.” Lilith is the one to answer from the passenger seat, murmured from the corner of her mouth, glanced from the edge of her vision, one eyebrow raised. Mary nods her concurrence. Camila just smiles.</p><p>Ava smiles, too, the kind of wide and rigid smile that comes with more uncomfortable laughter. And shit, here come the words, and why? “Heh. Yikes. I, uh, I don’t know if I should be thanking you or apologizing? So, uh, that means probably both.” What the fuck is this. The whole coma dread has begun to dissipate, which is super, but now <em>this</em> and whatever literal dumbassery it is. Forgetting to speak is better. “Both, right? I mean, that couldn’t have been comfortable, for like, any part of you.” Oh God, yep, given their conversations it’s awkward, and so are both of them. “So, sorry there. But anyway yeah, also thank you. Flopped out on the van floor, oof,<em> no es bueno</em>.” Her hands are wheeling and she’s breaking into Spanish! That’s a new one. But it must just be what happens when you’re passed out with your head in an attractive (wait <em>what</em>, file <em>that</em> one away for much later consideration) nun’s lap for a full fucking rotation of the Earth. Another fresh experience for the reborn Ava. Anyone spare some duct tape for the poor Warrior Nun? “Just hope I didn’t drool on you. I do that sometimes. Supposedly. Okay, it’s not supposed, I do.” Fucking Christ, Hail Mary (the allegedly-Virgin one, not the driver, who’s <em>definitely</em> watching Ava in the rearview mirror, and why?).</p><p>And Sister Beatrice of the Order of the Cruciform Sword, in all her hallowed mercy and through the intercession of the Holy Spirit, shuts Ava the hell up with a quick wave of her hand. It’s the most haphazard movement Ava’s ever seen her make (though still pretty graceful). “You didn’t. No drooling.” She shakes her head. Her hair’s uncovered, even some debatable degree of <em>messy</em>, with wayward strands slipping out of the knot at the back of her neck. And it’s strange - not really in the <em>seeing</em> of it, but in the comforting feeling <em>seeing it</em> brings. Change in full view. Like observing some bold iteration of something she’s only known for a moment. Novel dishevelment that steadies her - an alteration in the light that quiets her. The sensation is gone before Ava can name it. She breathes, unaware of her breathing. “Don’t apologize. Your thanks aren’t necessary, either. I was…” A pause. Beatrice swallows. “I wanted to be able to monitor you.”</p><p>“Cool, that’s…” Ava clears her throat. “Good. Cool.” Try to say <em>cool</em> one more time, work it right in there. “So, just confirm for me, no coma.”</p><p>“No coma.”</p><p>“Cool.” There it is.</p><p>But Beatrice must not have noticed, because she nods and smiles. The hesitant little grin Ava’s seen once or twice before, in the context stupid puns. One that makes it look as though she’s trying to hide, trying not to let it reach her eyes. But even though Beatrice’s eyes look <em>so</em> tired, some fragment of it does. Something in the expression makes Ava mindful of the lack of space that’s managed to remain between them. Twisted into Beatrice, hip pressed against the side of her thigh. Hands there, too, fingertips close. Some kind of unfamiliar remainder ignites in the gap. Beatrice’s arms are bare. Hadn’t noticed that yet.</p><p>Ava feels ready to readjust, scooting back against the side of the van with as much ease as her stuff limbs can muster. The space between her and Beatrice stretches and vibrates.</p><p>Mary speaks over the silent buzzing.</p><p>“Five minutes out.” A click of her tongue. “Couldn’t come quicker. I can’t feel my ass.”</p><p><em>Know that feeling</em>, Ava doesn’t say, and she’s glad that one stays inside. And she knows they’re holding back. Nobody is talking about what happened at the Vatican, or what’s going to happen next, and she knows it’s for her sake. They’re being cautious of her. Toeing a line, edging away from it. Some part of it hurts. Ava’s scared, but she’s not weak.</p><p>(Ava’s scared, and she appreciates it.)</p><p>“I know I missed all the fun, but I’m glad too. Because I think I’ve kind of felt through the big stuff at this point, and now I’m starting to feel the smaller stuff.”</p><p>“Like what?” Beatrice asks, narrowing her eyes, all measured concern.</p><p>“Like I’m starving.” She presses a hand to her stomach, awakened and rumbling. “And, uh, I have to pee, pretty badly. I think I can make it? But on a scale of one to urgent, it’s urgent.”</p><p>“Looks like we got our priorities set for when we get there,” Mary says. “Find a toilet and find some food.”</p><p>“In that order, probably.” Lilith’s flat remark earns an amused, lilting hum of agreement from Camila.</p><p>“That order, yeah.” Ava tries to swallow, but nearly gags on the dryness of her throat. “I’m also <em>really </em>thirsty. My bladder is pretty much shrieking at me not to ask, but. Is there water?”</p><p>Before the whole question even hits the air, Beatrice is handing her a cup with a lid and straw. Ava takes the offering right away and drinks deep, sucking down gulp after gulp, like forty days and nights in the desert have just wrapped up. She pauses, catches her breath, then drinks some more until it runs empty. Her bladder doesn’t rupture. It’s another positive.</p><p>Then, Ava looks at the cup.</p><p>“What the <em>fuck</em>, you got McDonald’s?”</p><p>“Didn’t I say it?” Mary asks in immediate response to Ava’s indignant outburst.</p><p>“Seriously! We used to beg the Sisters for it at Saint Michael’s,” Ava groans, looking at the waxy cup in pure dismay. “We had it <em>maybe</em> once a year. Once. And now you all get your burgers and nuggets and fries and I miss out, again. In the face of everything that’s...that’s pretty screwed-up, you guys.”</p><p>Silence. Just the van’s engine revving and leveling as it propels them up the cliffside road.</p><p>Until Mary snorts.</p><p>“Jesus, Ava. We’ve got a <em>couple</em> more pressing issues to deal with. Like Hell breaking loose. And our Halo Bearer’s crying over a goddamn Happy Meal. Fantastic shit. We can't lose.”</p><p>Then Mary laughs. Hard, hearty. A laugh that’s like a pull from perdition. Tears in her eyes, shoulders shaking while she tries to keep steady on the steering wheel. The others stare at one another, blinking, for just a second, before it sweeps them up too: mirth in pure release. It’s not even that <em>funny</em>. And reason to laugh in general is pretty fucking scant. But all the same, Camila laughs from her belly, head thrown back against the window. Beatrice’s is more reserved, but no less genuine, hand pressed to her mouth, shaking her head with it. Even Lilith lets out an incredulous half-sigh, half-guffaw, smirking and rolling her eyes.</p><p>And Ava joins in with them. Laughing past the soreness in her ribs and back and neck, past everything she’s still struggling to understand. Laughs past the fear that’s so much a part of her, laughs even though it’s ridiculous and the future is likely so <em>fucked</em>. She laughs with them, and remembers that they were this, before her. She imagines them, then, sharing joy, tears, every bit of it, a family - wondering if this means she’s a part of all things, now, too.</p><p>The collective laughter continues, on and off, for three minutes, until the van finishes its ascent, crossing the threshold of the breathtaking ancient city, their momentary hopeful promise of sanctuary. The GPS’s accented voice, the only one not weary after twenty-four hours of harrowing uncertainty, somehow succeeds at heralding their arrival over the sound of their completely absurd amusement.</p><p>“<em>You have reached your destination.</em>”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Even At Your Worst</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I am...once again...asking you to look at the chapter count. I AM CRINGE</p><p>(I am so sorry. These scenes keep fleshing themselves out. Don't scorn me for being a shitty planner.)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Opening the van doors is like rolling away their own stone - it’s only been one day, though. Not some debatable semblance of three.</p><p>Mary parks at the outskirts of town, hoping to keep as much distance as possible between the nightmare-lashed past and the fragile present. There’s no fanfare for their arrival aside from the sound of the engine turning off with a near-whine of relieved gratitude. Then, heavy quiet, compounded by too many blurred thoughts lingering in the dripping seconds. They’ve stopped with the hysterics and now, again, there’s not much to say. Only all of the obvious pressing in on them.</p><p>A destination reached, an uncertain world coming back into focus. With one sharp breath, they’re thrust back into it all. No more in-between after two thousand kilometers of transition. Just <em>this</em> life, whatever it is, whatever the fuck it could become at any moment.</p><p>Doors swing out. Wary feet hit solid ground.</p><p>Beatrice sways and staggers in contact upon hopping from the rear compartment, but she catches herself before she topples over entirely. It’s unusual enough to make Ava look again at the deep shadows under her eyes, and then her own legs are like lead, too. Ava watches Beatrice blink, watches her breathe and then compose; she wants to say something, anything, an apology or some murmur of concern, but she’s dealing with a sudden and distinct<em> lack </em>of words. For once. Cool.</p><p>They’re all sore, they’re bruised and bloodied, they’re exhausted and half-numb, minds and bodies (and maybe souls) alike. But they have to walk. To push a little further onward.</p><p>So they do.</p><p>And the early evening sun. It’s totally blinding, sending them squinting and grimacing as they make their way through. But even as it beats down on them, it’s not penetrative. There’s no bleed-through of the heat or the light, like they’ve been coated in some strange new opacity. The light is there, and it’s close, but it’s beyond sense. Ava shivers, and it’s ridiculous to feel actual cold with the sunlight flooding everything else around her, illuminating every inch of the cliffside splendor that’s coming into view ahead.</p><p>Seeing it now brings a very different feeling than it did weeks ago. Not the all-consuming awe of the first time. It’s some weird mixture of comfort and dread that fucks with her pulse. Like it doesn’t know how to regulate, or whether to go quicker or slow down, so it tries to do both at once, which just makes everything even more uncomfortable. Ava looks around at the others, to see how they’re reacting. To see if she’s alone in the discomfort.</p><p>She looks at Beatrice. Beatrice looks back; Beatrice looks <em>tired</em>.</p><p>But Beatrice gives her a nod anyway, eyes with that same intent glint as <em>trust your team</em>, and there’s a measure of comfort in the callback. Ava’s heart finally figures out what it’s trying to do. Calms, a little. Trusts, a little more than it calms. For now.</p><p>Their trudging is eventually spotted as they cross the bridge to the village center. Yasmina and a few other children recognize them from a distance and abandon their football, pointing and shouting with excited reverence before dashing over to receive them.</p><p>“<em>Hola, guapa</em>.” Mary lets out an exaggerated groan as she accepts Yasmina’s enthusiastic embrace, lifting the girl off her feet for a quick second. The other children flock to them, too, chattering happy welcomes with gazes of grateful respect. Camila, brightened by their presence, is already crouching down and introducing herself to a few of the smaller kids in cheerful Spanish. Beatrice, gentle-eyed and allowing a weary smile from spreading across her face, places a hand on a little boy’s cheek. Something in the action makes Ava watch for a split second too long, all jumbled guilt and thick throat. That hand on her back as she woke, that subtle touch guiding her through the haze. Novel connection. Ava swallows.</p><p>As Lilith even doles out pleasant nods to her gracious admirers, it makes Ava consider everything she’s missed, everything she can’t do, the way the rest of them are pushing through the suffering for these kids. Selflessness. Ava’s still practicing that. But the OCS made a difference here - all of the footprints left behind in an upheaved world. In an eruption. Shit. She tries not to think of the wraiths, or of all those innocent people at the Vatican. (She <em>tries</em> not to. Maybe she should look at Beatrice again.)</p><p>Yasmina throws her arms around Ava, taking her by surprise and helping to banish the flashes of red smoke.</p><p>“Sister Ava!” She sounds ecstatic, and Ava doesn’t correct her on the title. ‘It’s so wonderful to see you again.”</p><p>Ava softens, returning the embrace with one arm. “Yeah. Back at ya, Yasmina.” She tries to draw on that descriptor of <em>wonderful</em> with mild-to-moderate success. Yasmina laughs, and Ava finds herself thinking of Diego; he’s right around Yasmina’s age. The thought comes with something that feels hollow, like a pang of loss and jolt of hope smashed together. She hopes that he’s alright - her first friend, her only friend for the longest time. She has more friends, now, more to face the darkness with her. Family. What she and Diego didn’t have before. She’ll have to tell him about all of this next time she sees him. The McDonald’s, too. (The McDonald’s <em>especially</em>. He’ll laugh at that, like Yasmina’s laughing now.)</p><p>More familiar faces join the procession as the eager commotion surrounding them makes its way through the street. And not a single one of them looks the slightest bit troubled or put-off by their appearance. No questions asked, no eyebrows raised. Only pleasant welcomes and fervent<em> dos besos</em>, all around. This town’s been through hell, like actual capital-H Hell. They can probably recognize that the five of them were just dragged through it, too, full-Dante style. Maybe these folks are their Virgil. Some super messed-up kind of <em>real recognize real</em>, like the kids say. Maybe there’s a mark on them, maybe there are new ghosts in their eyes. Maybe Ava can feel them tugging at her. She shivers, again. Maybe this is the first reach in the climb from the chasm of Purgatory. Long way up from here.</p><p>Mary reaches out to clasp hands with Francisco when he appears before them.</p><p>“Tell us what you need, Mary,” he says, voice quiet but sure. “Anything.”</p><p>“A lot,” she admits, sucking her teeth and then letting go of a loud sigh. “More than I wanna say, more than I can probably even think about. We need to speak to Father Orozco, ask somewhere to stay for a few days. But other than that? Can’t speak for anyone else, but I need a beer.”</p><p>And Francisco’s laughter is nothing but warm as he puts his arm around her. “Plenty of <em>cerveza</em> to go around, Sister. We will take care of you, just as you took care of us.”</p><p>Dolores sidles up to Lilith, taking her arm as they all walk, and Ava overhears her comment on how lovely Lilith’s hair is. How much she loves the change, and how she wishes she was younger so could pull off the silver without looking exactly like her <em>abuelita</em>.</p><p>And in the scope of it all, it’s absolutely ridiculous. This incredibly fucked-up mysterious thing none of them has even <em>mentioned</em> yet? Lilith’s hair? What the fuck’s going on there? And then referenced so casually? Holy shit, what terrible sitcom <em>is</em> this? It’s enough to make Ava want to laugh out loud, or maybe scream. She’s not sure. Before she lets either come out, some incredulous noise from her hollow chest, she looks around to see if anyone else caught it, too.</p><p>Again, her unsettled, searching gaze settles on Beatrice.</p><p>And Beatrice still looks plain <em>tired</em>, even though she’s trying hard to make it look like she’s not. Shoulders rolled forward, eyes deep-set and heavy. So unlike how Ava’s ever seen her before.</p><p>Ava looks down, bites her lip. The outburst fizzles out before it can escape. It’s probably for the best.</p>
<hr/><p>Priorities: toilet, food. Good call, Lilith, on the specific order. Ava all but sprints for the restroom as soon as they cross the church’s threshold, making it with probably milliseconds to spare. No peeing her pants today, at the very least. Another big fucking check for Ava. Again, it’s the small victories, especially in the face of all of the other fuckery.</p><p>It feels like she’s gone for at least half an hour, but that must be her brain exaggerating shit again, trying to get used to a space with actual quantifiable time again, instead of floating around in the pre-Genesis goo like she was for the past day.</p><p>(<em>Let there be light</em>, but what good is the light doing now?)</p><p>She wanders out to find them gathered in the nave, each accepting a surprised but gladdened embrace from Father Orozco, dressed in his full vestments in preparation for evening Mass. She hasn’t missed much. She hasn’t missed another day.</p><p>“Of course,” he answers some unheard request with an earnest bob of his head. “You will find safety here in the face of any trouble. We owe you everything - I owe you everything. The friary is empty and open to you...no deacons in the dormitories these days. It is no luxury, but real beds will be better than sleeping on the pews. And you know you are welcome to the clothes in the back room.”</p><p>“Thank you, Father.” Beatrice bows, voice genuine but also almost rasping. “Though the pews would have been fine. We also appreciate your discretion.”</p><p>“It is the very least I can do, Sister.”</p><p>Ava’s been hearing the conversation from a distance as she makes her slow way over. Her senses are finally catching up to everything around her. It’s too much all at once, making her dizzy. Echoing voices and footsteps. Boots on the smooth flooring, the still air. Every pinpoint candle flame trying to ward off its own tiny pocket of darkness. The sanctuary, teeming with gold ornamentation, baroque and overwhelming and striking. It seems brand new. The crowned Virgin of Peace, backlit and bold, praying over her crucified son - his arms spread along the cross’s horizontal beam. Suspended in midair, nails treating at flesh. Being torn apart. Taking on so much - the weight of the world. Ava flashes again to the Vatican, thinks of being weightless, and her throat threatens to seize.</p><p>But there’s another sense, too, cutting in over the overwhelming others. Scent. Burning frankincense, heady and sickly-sweet. She manages to breathe it in, and something in it is soothing. The feeling of waking up. Waking up, Beatrice’s hand on her back. Holding onto Beatrice’s skirts. Connection, twenty-four hours of it, more than she can recollect having with anyone or anything. And she’ll have to think about that little tidbit (how her heart races) more specifically later on. For now, there’s too much buzzing to add anything else.</p><p>For now, it serves to heave some of the crushing weight off her chest. Ava’s throat opens again.</p><p>And just in time, because she’s close enough now that their eyes are on her.</p><p>Beatrice’s exhausted eyes are on her.</p><p>“Ava.” Father Orozco’s arms open to her, and she allows herself to be enfolded by them. “I knew I would see you again. I prayed for it, and for you.”</p><p>Darkness, everywhere, in everyone. Demons inside, demons outside, demons all around. Light striking versus light scattering away. Everything connects eventually, in one way or another. Father Orozco’s demon. Adriel. Something that looks like choice put right up against the helpless lack of it. Being entirely fooled. A passenger, over and over: car wreck, orphanage bed, levitating, passed out in the van.</p><p>Ava clings to Father Orozco without realizing it, with absolutely <em>zero</em> reason to be embracing anyone in a chasuble. But she isn’t ashamed of how her body reacts in discord with her mind. No - she just thinks of Father Vincent, and reels at how two categorically similar things can actually be so fucking fundamentally different.</p>
<hr/><p>As they leave, Mary quietly bums a handful of cigarettes off of one of the old men milling around outside.</p><p>Nobody says a word about the sneaky transaction. No one gives a look of shock or a critical side-eye. Not even Lilith.</p><p>Ava might ask her for a smoke, later. Just to try it.</p><p>Or maybe her lungs have already done enough, been through enough. Shouldn’t risk it. She has the vague memory of fucking <em>wailing</em>, a lot, and loudly. Bloody murder. Like from behind bulletproof glass, like something from Hell. Like cracking dimensions into clean halves.</p><p>And then collapsing into the void. Her throat hurts, even now.</p><p>And Beatrice was shouting, too, right before that nothingness thundered in. That, she remembers more clearly. Ava’s name, the one she’s always had, the name her mother gave her. One of the only things she left behind for her. Ava’s name. But in a way she’s never heard it before. Sounding all brand-new, terrifying and unfamiliar and mesmerizing.</p><p>Maybe there’s even more to her that’s brand-new. Coming through the static, through her own shadow, with no beacon or signal to guide her in.</p><p>And that idea gets tacked onto the growing list of things that scare her - that list was always longer than she liked to admit, even to herself.</p><p>(Now, it’s just long.)</p>
<hr/><p>Her mind’s starting to go off the tracks again. And Ava’s starting to believe that it’s doing it to protect her.</p><p>Regardless of its goal, wander it does. And if you look up <em>asinine </em>in the dictionary, you’d see an illustration of Ava trying to wrestle herself out of all that leather-and-chain-mail tactical gear. The outfit may look badass, but there’s not much <em>tactical</em> about it at all, truly. Especially the gauntlets. What the <em>fuck</em> are the <em>gauntlets</em> for, anyway? Besides being infuriating and making her arms sweat. She’s never been so goddamn sweaty. Conceptually, sure, they’re a pretty crucial component of armor. Archery, arm guards, all those arteries and all that. But in practice? Ava hadn’t been aware those were still a thing anyone (well, sure, combat-trained nuns aren’t really <em>anyone, </em>and yep, <em>that’ll</em> probably never stop being weird) even wore. Besides people who like to unironically dress up as vikings, or, like, LARPers. No judgement, of course. She’s got no room to judge anyone. God, if <em>only</em> she was a fucking LARPer. Sounds a lot more pleasant than this shit right now. Though she probably still wouldn’t wear gauntlets.</p><p>At least her outfit includes pants. The nuns’ skirts? Even more singularly ridiculous. Live by the habit, die by the habit. Beatrice’s skirts seemed soft, though, when she was lying on them. When she was huddled up against them. And there’s that weirdness again. Pencil that in for <em>tomorrow’s</em> brainmelt session, please. But yeah, anyway, Ava’s half-jacket isn’t too functional, either. Stylish and hip in this life <em>and </em>the next, apparently. Great tagline. What would Chanel say? Would she approve? Why can’t she stop thinking of people she’ll probably never see again? Fuck, she feels sick again - claws deep in her insides. If her mind’s trying to protect her, it’s not doing a good job. It’s not doing a good fucking job at a number of things.</p><p>What the fuck is it going to take for everything to be quiet? For anything to be quiet. Not coma-quiet, not death-quiet. Because those are enough to curdle her blood. No, just <em>quiet</em>. Just calm. Like things have never really been, and might not have a hope of being in this life. Maybe in the next, if there’s a next. If there is, it’s probably coming soon. Warrior Nuns don’t seem to be an enduring entity in this one. And her intention to be the end of the chain comes thundering back around.</p><p>Morbid. Okay, Ava, breathe, swing out of this spiral. Cope. Brain, do the thing. Shit, wait. Is that <em>fight</em>, or <em>flight</em>? Not a clue. Never a clue. Doesn’t matter. Moving on. Another small victory to clasp onto: loose, soft cotton is gonna feel wholly orgasmic in place of what she’s been wearing for nearly two days (the <em>gauntlets</em>, she’s fixating). She pulls on the running shorts she grabbed at the church and prepares to do the same with the hoodie.</p><p>A quick flash of something odd in her peripheral vision stops her. Her reflection, in the streaked mirror stuck on the back of the dormitory room door. She’s seen more of her reflection in the past month than she has in her life. Making out with herself, giddy and delirious, in a shop window, and then wrapped in a towel, flirting with JC (cool, another person cast into discontinuity). Osmium vest and braided hair at the Cat’s Cradle, numbly confused as fuck. Covered in crimson in a ferry bathroom. Habit and veil at the Vatican, looking like the others but feeling somewhat like a fraud; a disguise in more than one way.</p><p>Each time, she looked the same. Each time, she wasn’t. Each time: a whiplash iteration to desperately try to comprehend before another one comes barreling in. Like trying to keep up with ghosts.</p><p>This is yet another iteration of Ava Silva. She can’t number it, and it’s fucked that she’s lost count. But this particular one wigged the fuck out at the Vatican. This one has more power, too much power, and less understanding than before.</p><p>This one’s trying not to be afraid of herself.</p><p>Ava licks her lips and twists around, gazing at her bare back in the glass. The Halo mark between her shoulder blades is way too visible in this light.</p><p>
  <em>It’s just that it’s a perfect circle, so…</em>
</p><p>And it’s still just bizarre.</p><p>It’s a part of her. It’s in her system, it’s asking too much of her. It’s forcing a change with no room for ease. But it’s a part of her. So, transitive property. <em>She’s</em> just bizarre.</p><p>Slowly, carefully, she reaches back over her shoulder, drawn to swiping at the raised patterning with her fingertips. Her blood is coursing, her nerves are alive like a thousand little waves of uncertainty. She’s still reaching, barely hovering. The thought of stealing one grazing touch from her own body shouldn’t have her hand shaking like this.</p><p>A knock at the door makes her jump. Her hand jerks away before she can work through the action.</p><p>“Yeah?” she says too loudly, voice cracking, snatching the hoodie from the ground for need of something to do with her limbs.</p><p>“Ava?”</p><p>Beatrice’s voice, from the other side of the door. Her name still sounds new; for a second, it’s almost like her name makes sense.</p><p>“Uh, yeah. It’s me.”</p><p>Dumb fucking answer. Time to throw herself passionately into the sun. The silence from the outside makes it clear that the perplexed reaction is shared.</p><p>“Are you...dressed?” Beatrice finally asks, sounding strained. “We’ve been waiting. Is everything alright?”</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Hang tight, give me a sec.” Ava, rushed and ever-graceful, fumbles with the hoodie, barely managing to get her head and arms through the proper holes without dislocating a shoulder.</p><p>Smoothing her hair back from her face, she opens the door.</p><p>And <em>when</em> Ava opens the door, it’s a hell of a struggle to keep from faltering. Because she’s so used to the habit. She’s only seen its absence once before. And that might have been a hallucination, with everything blurred by her own blood - nunchucks to the face, crossbow shot almost to the boob. All she remembers, really, are Beatrice’s eyes.</p><p>But Ava’s pretty sure this moment isn’t the product of some indisposed delirium. And Jesus wept, Beatrice is wearing those black pants and that gray crewneck sweatshirt <em>well</em>. Apparently it’s a thing this Ava Silva notices, and that’s slowly falling in the rankings of Things That Are Weird. No head cover, hair pulled back, low bun. Amber eyes still exhausted but lit with typical and thorough concern. The clothes, so simple, so utilitarian. So her. The shirt is a bit too big for her frame, but that makes it better somehow? There’s gravity in juxtaposition. The sweatshirt makes her look small. But Beatrice is a badass. Beatrice is fucking deadly. Right now, Beatrice’s gravity makes Ava falter.</p><p>And the shirt’s collar. It’s baggy, it’s lazy, it hints at skin always kept out of sight. The base of her neck, the sharp crevice of her collarbone. Ava’s face has been buried there before. Her gaze sweep over the pale novelty and her reality splinters into discordant, jumbling words. Her mind becomes <em>right </em>and <em>wrong, </em>at once. Her ribs are <em>possess</em>. The rest of her body is <em>reach</em>. Her strange fucking existence becomes <em>wonder</em>: each one of its meanings in full.</p><p>Then the splinters fall away with the shuddering impact of total quiet. Ava hardly notices.</p><p>Until Beatrice speaks.</p><p>“What?” It’s a shaky, uncomfortable syllable. Her eyes dart away while she plays with her collar, and Ava’s staring had not been unobtrusive.</p><p>“What <em>what</em>?” Ava, blinking, clears her throat. “Uh, nothing. I’m, um, just not <em>in the habit</em> of seeing you <em>out of the habit</em>.”</p><p>Her limited supply of habit puns is quickly being exhausted. She hopes this one is enough to distract from the hella awkwardness that just flailed around between them. Fight fire with fire, fight cringe with cringe.</p><p>“I see.” Beatrice looks up and folds her hands in front of her waist. “Understandable. Though I guess I wouldn’t have expected it to be such a shock.”</p><p>Ava dismisses her with a quick wave of her hand. “No, nothing like that at all. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a great outfit. Love the shirt.” The words are clumsy, but true enough to bring a genuine little smile in their wake.</p><p>Beatrice, appearing gently unconvinced, raises an eyebrow.</p><p>“Yours...is on inside-out.”</p><p>Shit.</p><p>Ava answers immediately. “It’s reversible.” It’s so not reversible. “Hold on.”</p><p>She shuts the door in Beatrice’s face and corrects her blunder with a flustered sigh.</p><p>“Okay!” she exclaims as she flings the door open, because that’s what feels right to do, though everything inside is still half-hollow. “Let’s get some food. Everything’s a certified mess, but <em>tortilla</em> awaits. I feel like I haven’t eaten in <em>days</em>.”</p><p>The momentum carries her past Beatrice and away.</p>
<hr/><p>Ava isn’t sure what makes her ask.</p><p>“You know everyone in town pretty well, right?”</p><p>Mateo looks up from his notepad with a bemused smile.</p><p>“Like family.”</p><p>Ava bites her lip. “How’s the guy from last time?” It probably doesn’t need specifying, but she does anyway. “The one whose demon I exorcised with a chicken and a rack of ribs.”</p><p>“Ah. And you said you didn’t have the gift.” Mateo shakes his head, chuckling. “Armando is a little better every day. He still sleeps a lot, but he’s never alone. And he’s starting to smile more, like normal.”</p><p>Everything connects, in one way or another.</p><p>And sitting at the table, Ava tries. Like, really tries. She tries to be everything she can, everything she’s not. The leader they went searching for, pulling her own weight.</p><p>“We can talk about what happened, you know.”</p><p>Her bottle of beer is untouched. Probably not a good idea to drink it before she has something in her stomach. The soggy label is peeling, and she rips at it, realizing she just said <em>what happened</em> instead of <em>The Vatican</em> or <em>Adriel </em>or <em>Father Vincent</em> or <em>all the lies</em>. Avoidance already. Super convincing. But still trying.</p><p>“I mean, don’t we kind of need to talk about it?” she goes on, squinting at her fingers, feeling the attention pressing in but putting too much effort into the asking to do any looking. “Don’t we need to come up with some kind of plan?” There’s a <em>we</em> to reference, now, one she’s pulling out her own strings for and then fumbling to weave herself into. More attached than detached, pulled along but willing. She has to spit out the next words over a mixture of stomachache and humiliation. “I feel like nobody is mentioning it because of me. Because you’re afraid I’ll freak out. Well, I won’t.” She hopes. Fight, not flight. It’s a constant clash, and her adrenaline receptors are fried from it. “I’ve never promised a lot. I’ve never had a lot to promise. But I promise that. No more cruising around Andalusia for me. No more Mary and Lilith beating the absolute shit out of each other trying to get to me.”</p><p>The sarcasm covers up the more daunting words. <em>I need all of you, so much. More than I planned to. Don’t leave, don’t make me small.</em></p><p>But as they materialize in her mind, Ava wishes she had said them instead. Abandoned, passed over, they resonate in the silence.</p><p>Mary is the one to respond, and Ava catches a hint of tobacco smoke on her answer.</p><p>“Look, Ava. You can save the tortured hero bullshit. We believe you, but this isn’t about you. We’ll talk about it, and we’ll plan. But some of us are processing a lot more than you. Years’ worth of shit, Ava. On a lot less sleep.”</p><p>She guesses she had that one coming.</p><p>Ava looks at all of them. At Lilith, at Camila, at Beatrice. And they’re all looking at her, but their eyes are distant. Fighting with phantoms, parrying away lies. But still here, surrounding her, even when she's struggling to stand for something. Going through Hell (capital-H, again) together. She's wrapped up in the <em>together</em>. More strings find purchase. Beatrice is looking at her.</p><p>It’s not about her.</p><p>But she trusts.</p><p>(Mateo arrives with food, just in time. Ava, still starving despite every little awful thing, inhales half a skillet of <em>tortilla</em> and tries not to puke.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Comments and kudos are as appreciated as every single one of you kind readers!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Light, Close</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Well look, it's the <em>final</em> chapter! I thank you so much for sticking on this ride with me, and I hope you all enjoy!</p><p>Note: since I was roasted mercilessly (and kindheartedly) on both Twitter and Discord, I refused to split this up on principle. So, this conclusion is about 8K words long. Just so you can give yourself time to read!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And it’s fucked up and unfair, the way the <em>strong</em> comes in fickle flashes and turbulent waves, rushing in and then dwindling without giving Ava the chance to actually possess it.</p><p>It’s also pretty grisly to have Sister Frances on her mind right now, but what’s one more spectral echo in the grand scheme of this whole mess? Besides, she’s not really thinking of Frances, not exactly. She’s thinking of the candle, the one on the table beside her bed at St. Michael’s. The candle Frances lit every single unending night of her twelve years inside that veritable hellhole. Each night from when she was seven, waking up terrified, paralyzed, and with a brace around her neck, to when she was nineteen, waking up terrified, but mobile, with an ancient relic buried just a little lower over her spine.</p><p>And while there was plenty of useless junk on Ava’s already-sparse shelves (that Rubik’s Cube mostly gathered dust), that goddamn candle and its every successor could contend for the top spot. Just unscented (and <em>unscented</em> wasn’t truly <em>unscented, </em>it was more like <em>vague scent of burnt waxy ass</em>) and boring white. On the glass votive, Jesus showing off his Most Sacred Heart - in flames, circled by thorns, and topped with his Cross - like a sick new tattoo, over and over and over. But Frances was staunch in her belief that the light’s purity could penetrate all of the darkness in the room, and within Ava. The flame offered Christ’s close protection - that constantly-murmured <em>“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” </em></p><p>Yeah, thanks for that one, Johnny.</p><p>For Ava, the candle was an annoyance. And a fire hazard. Seriously, she would always think of how hilariously screwed up it was to have it burning by her bedside - if it ever managed to somehow tip over or shatter from heat, she’d have been most indubitably fucked. Some nights it would keep her awake, its tiny yet infuriatingly bright flame flickering and casting shadows distracting her from sleep. She could see it scorched on her retina even with her eyes closed. (There are dramatics, here, but they’re warranted.)</p><p>Some nights Ava would try to blow it out, damning Frances’s sentiment a few of the only parts of her body she could command. Some nights, she succeeded.</p><p>Now, though, she’s thinking of that stupid candle. And missing it. But only because no matter how much its existence once pissed her off, having it there would mean having <em>something</em> familiar with her in that dark monastic room. Where everything else is foreign. Austere. Silent. Depressing and basically empty, except for Ava, alone in the bed - God’s champion, cowering under the fucking covers, actively trying not to disintegrate into shambles of pathetic weeping.</p><p>It had been easier (but still not easy) to feel some semi-decent amount of <em>okay</em> with everyone else around. With her friends around, rays of calm that penetrate her skin and bones even when the daylight can’t. To keep her anchored, and to help her modulate her reactions, and to keep her focused on being here - on making the continual choice <em>to </em>be here.</p><p>Even when the sun’s clear presence is somehow deflected and out of reach, the total lack of it in the night is still worse. At least in the day, she can logically recognize that the sun is there in the first place. Her eyes only play a few tricks on her, as opposed to this continual maybe-hallucination.</p><p>And if Ava could just go the fuck to sleep, at least the night would stand a chance at being over. But, <em>come on</em>. Sleep, now? She just slept for twenty-four hours and every single synapse in her brain is firing with abandon, raring to go, ripping at their seams and making her arms and legs move with relentless and near-thrashing constancy. There’s no comfort, there’s no drowsiness. There’s only coursing adrenaline, sending pins and needles through every vein. There’s only her strung-out but still-wired mind and the repetitive surges of dread brought on by every particle of darkness hovering around her. Everything is cold. Demons lurk here. She’s the one who’s supposed to fight them, and yet.</p><p>Hands shake, eyes sting and blink. Throat just won’t work to swallow against any of it. The panic feeds the sleeplessness and the sleeplessness feeds the panic and the cycle feels like a prison. Her chains won’t rattle; only her ribs rattle as she tries to breathe, and can only breathe too fast. A passenger. Actions hers but not hers, commanded by the suffocating darkness. Her body’s just betraying her again. First, Ava thinks, <em>this shouldn’t be this fucking scary,</em> but then, she thinks, <em>of course it should be</em>. She’s either seeing too clearly or not clearly at all.</p><p>Maybe the problem is nightmares. Not their presence, but their stark absence. Because when she was drifting in that void space, a dimension away from that weird, <em>weird</em> post-crisis road trip, nothing had form. No thoughts, no visions, no temporality, but yet all of it melded into one. And as if that feeling of infinity wasn’t enough to lose her shit over, now <em>this</em>.</p><p>She had no nightmares during her twenty-four hour not-coma. So now, they’re haunting her waking instead.</p><p>With her eyes open, Ava sees Adriel in every corner: controlling, commanding, staring, smirking. And then vanishing, leaving only bewildered fear. With her eyes closed, she’s back at the Vatican, feeling herself levitating, feet leaving the ground, backbone searing and splitting as the Halo throttles her to beyond anything she once was. There are so many things beyond what she is, so many things she can’t understand. She feels Areala’s last breath, she feels the bite of Divinium eroding Sister Shannon’s system, she feels Sister Melanie tearing at her binds with irrepressible fury.</p><p>But Ava doesn’t feel any of that through the Halo.</p><p>Ava doesn’t feel the Halo at all, now.</p><p>She <em>hasn’t </em>felt the Halo.</p><p>Not since Rome, since Adriel and the wraiths. Since she watched Mary and Camila and Lilith and Beatrice (<em>Beatrice</em>, like a two-step heartbeat, knocking the rest of them out order) lurching into the fray, ready to sacrifice themselves. Since she took its power too far and left herself in the dark. Nothing since she woke up in the van, thrown close across Beatrice’s lap. There’s only a stiff deadness where it’s buried, like the phantom sensations that zapped through her paralyzed limbs until she was ten or eleven. There, but not there. Keeping her up at night. Then and now. Everything eventually comes back around.</p><p>She had finally started getting at least a <em>little</em> bit used to feeling flares of something transcendent, there. Used to them enough to recognize their absence.</p><p>And she hasn’t said a word about it. Kept it from the others, and pushing every thought of it safely out of her own awareness. There was this idiotic hope running in the background, that it would just spark back up like it was nothing, that <em>something</em> in all this shit would just be easy. But nothing is ever easy, and Ava can’t ignore what’s lacking in the darkness of her own solitude.</p><p>For just a second, Ava hates that it’s a part of her. She had wanted to live. For much longer than a second, she hates that it’s gone. She doesn’t want to live without it.</p><p>But is it <em>gone</em>?</p><p>In the dark, she realizes exactly how she can find out.</p><p>The Holy Sword. The sword is<em> right here</em>, pure Divinium threat with a sacred cruciform hilt. But it’s sheathed and quiet, resting (unlike Ava), leaning against the edge of the bed. And there’s this moment of cold terror, of having the answer within reach. Is it better to know, or to not know? Both Proverbs and Nietzsche went on and on about this and right now, neither is very helpful. Her stomach hurts. Not too much tortilla, too much everything. Too much <em>nothing</em> between her shoulder blades, all heavy weightlessness.</p><p>With one awkward jerking motion, Ava rips herself from the bed and lunges for the leather scabbard.</p><p>And it becomes another one of those surreal hazy moments she’s been having more and more lately, like she’s watching herself from somewhere else. But she’s not some casual observer. She’s right here, with her trembling hands on the sword’s hilt, just under the silver cross, suddenly feeling much too small for the grip. She’s right here with a heaving chest and barely-contained fear, daring herself to expose the blade and <em>see</em>. Walk by faith, not by sight? Well, sight sure as shit helps.</p><p>It’s that anemically-defiant thought that gives her just enough backbone to draw the sword.</p><p>Hope is a virtue. Ava has it for a brief moment before it’s eclipsed by despair.</p><p>Because all her <em>sight</em> delivers is just more nothing. A steel blade in the lightless room, looking just like any other; dull metallic silver where there should be incandescent blue.</p><p>There are breaking points everywhere.</p><p>“Oh, <em>fuck</em>,” Ava chokes over freely-flowing tears as she reaches hers.</p><p>She drained the Halo. She <em>broke</em> the fucking Halo. This stupidly powerful relic or conduit of the goddamn ages, passed on since the First Crusade, busted the fuck up because Ava lost all control of herself. She’s rendered it powerless. She’s rendered herself powerless. Every scrap of calm dismantles, and trust is right out the window with a dramatic swan dive. They were all just starting to trust her. Ava had wanted to trust her reflection, but the fear of it is only further confirmed.</p><p>And there’s no shield between her and all the awfulness, now, so the panicked thoughts crash into her with the same frantic tempo as her rushed pulse. Fuck. <em>Fuck</em>. What the fuck are they going to <em>do</em>? Why isn’t it working? She never asked for any of this, but now she is. She’s fucking asking. Please. Please don’t leave her alone. Lay out every lie and double-cross, every manipulation, every fear, every power, she’ll take them on, just don’t leave her in vain like this. When Ava said the last, she meant <em>the last</em>, but not like this.</p><p>The next two thoughts thunder in - smallest of all, but punching through every shred of the rest. <em>The Halo is broken</em>, their foreboding herald, premise meeting conclusion.</p><p>Is it only a matter of time until she’s paralyzed again?</p><p>Is it only a matter of time until she’s dead again? (And how many heartbeats does she have left?)</p><p>Ava always dreamed of being dead. And now it’s coming again, when there’s more she needs to dream of. Everything eventually comes back around. There’s always more.</p><p>Desolated, desecrated. Unworthy after all, apparently and specifically. Chosen? Fuck that, what a huge joke. Chose <em>wrong</em>. Ava’s body seizes the opportunity to act while it can, sprinting past the edge of her conscious command. There’s no more curbing of the realization. Face contorting, Ava buckles, nearly keeling over. Without the Halo’s weight, her spine’s done holding up. And she doesn’t know if she’s just dizzy because she’s not breathing right or if her limbs are actually getting weaker or what’s going to happen or how to fix it or how to fix <em>anything</em> or what she needs. No, wait, that’s not true, she knows what she needs: she needs to fix it but she doesn’t know how. Someone knows how, someone has to know how. There <em>is</em> someone who knows much more than her, about absolutely everything, <em>there’s always more</em>.</p><p>That voice - the one with all the decisive answers - a distant echo straining to make itself heard over the ringing in her ears. A muted glow somewhere out of reach.</p><p>Ava knows what she needs. And right now, all of the <em>whys</em> and the <em>hows</em> of the sudden dawning conclusion aren’t important, only the conclusion itself is important, and what she needs is in the neighboring bedroom. Connection. A tether. A way to breathe, one that kept her breathing all the way here. Fifteen steps through the bathroom shared between the two tiny bedrooms. She could easily take them if her legs will carry her that far without collapsing.</p><p>She could easily take them, if taking them wouldn’t just turn her into more of a burden.</p><p>Because there are more voices joining now, a frenetic symphony of criticisms and deep-cutting comments. Words that were necessary but still burn her skin as they reverberate through the lightheaded haze. Different phrases, out of order, all in disharmony but all inflecting upon flaws Ava hadn’t even been fully aware she was carrying. And somehow, they meld together into one burst of reckoning that brings on a surge of anger to mingle with the devastation. It’s directed at herself alone, as she endures a series of all-new fingers in old bruises. Because each separate voice is correct, but each voice becomes even more correct when added to the others. The sum is greater than its parts.</p><p>A burden to everyone around her, burden to herself - no better than a child, preying on sympathy with constant sob stories. Self-centered and thoughtless. A bomb waiting to go off (and shit, <em>she sure did,</em> and the collateral damage brings another debilitating wave of fear). The Halo gave her a second chance at life and she was only just beginning to appreciate it. She drained the Halo, and she’s draining <em>them</em> dry of everything, too, of patience and strength and any of the other carefully-cultivated virtues. <em>Pick up the sword</em>. Each syllable, distinct and pained. <em>Take it</em>. But Ava’s already holding it. She’s barely holding on.</p><p>There are other truths, though, to shove back against the fearful truths spiraling down from her head. These truths take a moment longer to entify<strong>, </strong>swirling up from deep in her chest.</p><p>It’s still not the paralysis that scares her, not exactly. It’s being alone. In cement, in stone, in an orphanage, right here. What’s worse: being a burden or being forsaken? It’s unclear, it’s a toss-up, it’s just another answer she doesn’t know. But Ava would rather be rescued than be alone. She doesn’t have to be. She wasn’t alone at the Vatican. She wasn’t alone in the van, even when she was somewhere so far away.</p><p>And she doesn’t want to be alone now, in this life.</p><p>There’s more than one war to be fought; there’s more than one war to be won.</p><p>Reach out. Ask for help. Run toward, not away. Trust. <em>Fuck</em>, Ava, just trust. Trust even when they might be devastated, or angry, even when she doesn’t feel worthy of trust, trust when there’s nothing left to trust in. That’s the hard part. That’s the part she has to toil through, dismayed and desperate, for as long as she can move.</p><p>It takes Ava telling herself through a clenched jaw and burning eyes, downright <em>begging</em> herself to move four times before her limbs, jammed-up and shaking, unwind. Each motion takes more effort than it should. It’s still a struggle to breathe through the tears streaming down her face.</p><p>The sword comes with her, along with the blanket from her bed, because she’s so motherfucking cold. She wraps it around her shoulders as her quaking legs go staggering through the connecting bathroom and into the bedroom where Beatrice is staying.</p><p>The moonlight is managing to filter into Beatrice’s room with much more soft intensity than its attempts to illuminate Ava’s. She can already see more clearly as she crosses the threshold. (immediate thought: Adriel isn’t lurking there, thank God or whoever the hell else.) But seeing clearly becomes a more complicated issue when her frantic gaze settles on the bed.</p><p>Seeing clearly distracts Ava, like waking up.</p><p>Beatrice is sprawled on her stomach, head buried in her pillow, fast and utterly asleep, dead to the world, all slow breathing and stillness. Wearing that too-large gray sweatshirt, but having traded the pants for sleep shorts. Bedcovers, too extra, kicked off and wrapped around one ankle. And it’s kind of blindsiding, no, <em>really</em> blindsiding, the way she looks so much less graceful and composed in sleep than in waking. Her hair is loose and falling across her face, which is soft with the outward expression of being surely adrift. There’s more comfort in this marked contrast: Beatrice, awake, vigilant, quick and bright, even-keeled, warm but firm. Guarded (most of the time), always prepared. But <em>this </em>Beatrice? Asleep, like Ava’s never seen her. Beatrice sleeps? It’s really a whole concept. And when she sleeps she’s vulnerable, sweet. Open. Like a quick lull in all this pulsing velocity. Like stumbling in on something sacred. Sometimes all Ava does is stumble. Her hysterical atoms hover around the idea of something as routine as slumber casting this an odd new light at and around her.</p><p>It’s almost enough comfort to break through Ava’s panic.</p><p>(What <em>does </em>break through Ava’s panic is the guilt.)</p><p>Beatrice had looked so tired. Her voice was so slow and hoarse. The dark circles in the hollows of her eyes are less visible in the half-lit space, but still decidedly there. Beatrice didn’t rest for a full day, setting her own needs aside to allow Ava to rest (<em>on</em> her, an important footnote) instead, making herself burn like a candle for Ava’s sake. And she’s finally sleeping.</p><p>Ava, though. Ava slept on Beatrice for twenty-four hours, and now she’s panicking by her bedside. Arranged side-by-side, their nonreciprocal situation is a punch to the gut. Just more for Ava to drain. Take, take, take a little more. And now, nothing to give.</p><p>Ava’s full of faults and fault lines. She’s all tectonic collisions, growing mountains of crisis through <em>crunch </em>and <em>collapse.</em> There’s no way she can just wake Beatrice. Not now. Not after everything, not with the way Beatrice’s lips are parted as she breathes in some long-awaited fragment of peace. How long can it last, anyway? How can Ava rip that away? Breaking her calm would be a fuck-up of the highest order. And Ava’s shuddering sobs aren’t anywhere near as silent.</p><p>But the very thought of leaving sends a dose of acid cascading through her bloodstream. Ava’s ribs spasm (a painful breath, not out enough and then back in too fast, a double-beat where there should be only one, out-<em>in</em>).</p><p>And she wonders if it’ll be enough - hopefully not too little, hopefully not too much - what she plans to do, the only option.</p><p>Her heart is still on a rapid ride, too loud in her own ears, but she manages to move in relative quiet despite the bitten-back sobs wracking her whole skeleton. The floor beside the bed doesn’t look very forgiving, but this isn’t confession. <em>Forgiving</em> doesn’t live here, and neither does <em>absolution</em>, despite Ava’s contrition for what she caused here. Heartily fucking sorry for this and everything else as she waits for some unknown eventuality.</p><p>Ava settles there, curled on her side, making sure to face the bed (because maybe that’ll help). She barely feels the blanket as she tosses it over herself and squirms to get her legs under it. It’s still so cold. She pulls up her hood, feeling quiet tears drip from the corner of her eye to soak the cotton. The Holy Sword, she curls around it, pommel between her hands, blade pointed at her feet. It’s decidedly not comfortable. Nothing is comfortable. But she’s not alone, now; she can hear Beatrice breathing, mostly on the heavy exhale. The sleepy, regular pattern of sound should be enough for Ava to hitch onto and ride into unconsciousness - whatever that unconsciousness will bring.</p><p>Fuck, no. Wait. Bad thought. Shit, composure’s fleeing again as she unwillingly imagines the too-familiar uninterrupted blackness. Squealing brakes, one last thundering crash. A syringe, then drifting off watching television. Beatrice shouting her name as the Halo shorts out, making gravity come rushing back in as the marble floor moves just an inch closer. And now, before the next blackness, just this dusty carpet pressed into her face and Beatrice’s breathing, still too far away. She’s gasping, she’s crying, shit, she’s choking, she’s coughing around her own irregular breathing.</p><p>And it’s definitely not quiet because now there’s stirring above her. A tiny groan, questioning and disoriented, the sound of waking to something unexpected. Ava clenches her jaw with minimal success at stifling herself as she feels more shifting and then, finally, drowsy eyes trying to focus on her in the darkness. Ava cringes and shuts her own against the scrutiny.</p><p>Beatrice’s voice is half-slurred, but it’s her name.</p><p>“Ava?”</p><p>Ava says nothing but expects an accusation, some blame, a <em>why</em>, something like <em>why are you in here, crumpled on the floor weeping over a sword?</em></p><p>But what she hears isn’t harsh blame, it’s confused concern vibrating through a sleepy throat.</p><p>“Are you alright?”</p><p>She has no idea how to answer. She’s doing the thing where she forgets to goddamn <em>speak</em>, but mostly because any time her jaw opens, it’s just more strangled grief that pours out. But Beatrice is squinting at her, anticipating an explanation, propped up on one elbow, not yet of the mental wakefulness to be concerned with her bare legs. Words. Words won’t come. Forcing, with all her might, Ava remembers a few and strings just a handful of together, speaking more loudly than their surface meaning demands.</p><p>“I can’t…” An accidental gasp right through the middle. “I can’t sleep!”</p><p>It’s senseless. It’s too simple, it’s not even the <em>issue</em>, but it’s a start. The perplexed silence that follows gives room for another messy cough to erupt from Ava’s chest.</p><p>“I see that,” Beatrice answers after a moment of groggy consideration. Ava meets her gaze through watery vision, feeling out of control, watching her rub her eyes with the palm of one hand as she speaks. “I can also see that it’s distressing you, deeply, but it’s alright. Really, Ava. You just slept for a long time and your internal rhythm is probably off-kilter, a few days and you-”</p><p>“I know, I know that,” Ava interrupts, and she doesn’t mean to do it so forcefully but it’s the desperation that’s commanding her tone. More words are cascading in now, and for some reason, her throat takes the next ones to a quick, narrow whisper. “Beatrice, I drained the Halo.”</p><p>Beatrice blinks through the bleariness of waking somewhere unfamiliar. “You what?”</p><p>“I drained the Halo!” Ava cries, shifting to her knees in one abrupt motion and holding up the lifeless sword up for Beatrice to see. “I can’t feel it. I haven’t been able to feel it, and I didn’t want to tell anyone because I thought it would come back, because it always does, but the sword! <em>Look</em> at it, Beatrice.”</p><p>Ava shivers, struggling to catch her breath, while Beatrice reels, looking more awake all at once. The combination of Ava’s admission and having an actual blade brandished at her mere moments after coming out of a deep sleep is more than enough to pull her to full awareness. Through her own distress, Ava sees the calculations and conclusions whirl around behind her eyes, and maybe there are answers there, that’s what Ava had been hoping for: answers, and something to keep her feet on the ground. She’s on her knees for both.</p><p>After a second too long, Beatrice has something to say. “The sword. Put it down, Ava.” Calm, but shaken. Strained. Sounding like a thinly-veiled crisis mode. And she doesn’t have to say it twice, because Ava wants the chilling reminder out of her hands and far away, on another continent if possible. It hits the carpet with a sound far too quiet for its weight.</p><p>“I don’t know what to do.” Stammered, heaving. A plea. Someone tell her what to do.</p><p>“You didn’t tell anybody.” Another statement that easily could have been an accusation but isn’t. Beatrice holds her gaze, obviously trying to stay measured. Ava shakes her head, shoulders hunched, feeling like an idiot, wiping at the stream of tears on her cheeks with the cuff of her sleeve. “Ava, you could have.” Could have, not should have. Another non-admonishment. Fuck, why is she so being so goddamn mellow? This is a big deal and Ava royally screwed it.</p><p>“But you’re all dealing with this shit too,” Ava says with a violent hiccup, grabbing at the sheet over the mattress to keep herself upright, and Beatrice’s eyes dart toward the encroachment of her space before they flicker back to Ava’s. “Mary is hurting, and Camila is trying so hard to <em>not </em>be hurting, and Lilith is...well, Lilith is whatever the hell is happening to her, and you. You were so <em>tired</em>, Beatrice.” She gets the rest of the sentence out on a croaking, spent breath, shoulders rounding even more. “And it’s my fault.” Two meanings, double-fault: the utter exhaustion of Beatrice and the Halo alike.</p><p>Every word she releases feels like that Divinium dagger plunging into her back, what feels like so long ago, when <em>purpose </em>was something abducted and unacknowledged. They’re carving scars in her, cold glass and biting teeth, excising something that’s become radically intrinsic. Agitated gulps of air are becoming half-efficient wheezes, making awful noises in her chest. And if Beatrice wasn’t awake at the sword, she is now at Ava’s impending hyperventilation. Ava’s vision is white and fuzzy around the edges as she watches Beatrice make a quick shift in the bed, rising up to face Ava and sitting back on her heels, hinged over towards her.</p><p>“I understand that you’re scared, but you need to calm down,” Beatrice tells Ava with steady conviction and a commanding look, eyebrows raised, eyes intent. And this has happened before, a few Ava Silvas ago. Everything comes around eventually, light reflects and recycles. But this time, the chain is broken because there’s <em>nothing </em>to react to Ava’s emotions except for her heartbeat and the tight dizziness that’s mounting in her head.</p><p>“I don’t want to be pathetic.” Ava grabs at her own throat, pleading with it to stay open enough to both speak and move air. There’s so much pressure behind her eyes. Beatrice’s face is so close, and the way her dark hair frames it in the moonlight shadows is overwhelming. “I don’t want to be a burden. But I also don’t want to be…” The word <em>alone</em> doesn’t make it out because she chokes on it, with a rippling cough that somehow barely lets anything leave her lungs.</p><p>“Ava, you’re going to pass out.” More urgency finally leaks into Beatrice’s voice, more tension into her gaze. “You need to breathe. <em>Ava</em>.” Her name, echoing severalfold: cold shoulders and beef stew dinner. Crimson with a gun, an arrow piercing her chest. Arq-Tech concrete, phase after phase. The Vatican, once in the dark, once without sound. The van with hands on her back. Behind a closed door (<em>gray sweatshirt</em>). Again and again and again until now. Now the world’s spinning and Ava thinks of the word <em>abyss</em>.</p><p>“I can’t-” Another horrible raw noise from her chest. Beatrice hides a cringe. “I don’t…”</p><p>“Come on, now. Focus on me and breathe. You are not alone.” Beatrice gives a vehement shake of her head, finding Ava’s hands clenched in the contour sheet and taking them in her own. Ava feels them and marvels that the word made it through without being spoken. “No matter what. I meant it when I said it before, and I mean it now. Listen to me, settle your thoughts. Even if the Halo’s been compromised - which I do <em>not</em> think is true - you will never be alone, because you have us. We’re all here for you.” A pause, then, brimming with unsaids, and if Ava’s insides weren’t going ballistic she would see the flash of it on Beatrice’s face, would hear the way her voice catches on itself and wavers around a halted truth. Quieter, almost whispered, but somehow with a truer intonation that Ava half-hears. “I’m here for you, Ava.”</p><p>Everything inside boils down and then over. Ava spits out the bones with the feeling of unbearable pressure and annihilating release, lays the guilt behind every scrap of this completely bare.</p><p>“But not everything is about me.”</p><p>And without a fraction of that previous hesitation, Beatrice’s hands are on her face. Cool palms cupping flushed, tear-soaked cheeks. The contrast brings a part-measure of capture.</p><p>“Sometimes,” Beatrice says with careful gravity, holding Ava in place, keeping their eyes locked, and their foreheads are so close that if either nodded, they would be touching, “sometimes, things <em>can be</em> about you.”</p><p>And then Beatrice nods.</p><p>The touch, the closeness, the words, the cold moonlight. Ava lets out a feeble moan and cough, but then her chest expands, all of it colliding into her like adrenaline and clarity. Oxygen does a Halo Bearer good - the pins and needles in her limbs start to sift out and float away, and the spots flee from her blurred vision. She feels entwined and unfolded at the same time; she feels her body. Grounded, here, on her knees. Old carpet. Makes tight fists in the sheets, unmakes them. Proves it. Breathes, even though her throat hurts and her eyes are swollen and throbbing.</p><p>Beatrice murmurs encouragement, keeping their heads together. “Good. Breathe again, calmly.” Ava does, shaking on the inhale. She notices Beatrice’s fingers are shaking, too, maybe caught in between curling in Ava’s hair under her hood or itching to slip away. Ava prays (<em>almost</em>) for anything but the latter, anything but a lost mooring. They don’t fall away, but a hesitant thumb wipes at a stray tear. Ava could fold right there.</p><p>“Aren’t you angry?” Ava exhales, coarse of voice. “Aren’t you scared?” Ava is both. Ava is beyond both.</p><p>“I’m furious, and terrified. I don’t know who among us <em>isn’t</em> after the last thirty hours.” She nods again, and Ava whimpers at proximity of the words’ vibrations to her tender nerves. “But that makes it all the more important to keep your head, Ava. Spiraling will only make everything worse.”</p><p>“What is there to make worse? The Halo is-”</p><p>“Impaired? We don’t know that. We don’t truly know what the Halo is <em>at all</em>, now.” Beatrice releases Ava’s face (but keeps the eye contact), sinking back to her heels again. “Do we?”</p><p>Beatrice isn’t wrong - she’s apparently had plenty of time to think about this in that pragmatic way she thinks about every fucking little thing. What else was she going to do on the long trip here - sit there and stare at Ava?</p><p>So many lies. Lies everywhere, to her, to everyone, for centuries and centuries. Enough lies to make Ava more nauseous than she already is. But there’s one truth that wrecks her.</p><p>“We know it’s keeping me from being paralyzed.” Ava wipes her eyes again with her sleeves, willing the new tears to stop brimming. <em>Keep her head</em>. She’s broken to another stage: bitter, not hysterical. (But she can’t voice the other implicit outcome. Not without flying off the handle again. Thinking of it makes her insides crackle and protest.)</p><p>And she’s grateful as fuck that Beatrice doesn’t tread into the other one either, if not just a tiny bit annoyed by the way she answers. <em>Grateful </em>eclipses <em>annoyed </em>by at least a few orders of magnitude.</p><p>“And you’re not.”</p><p>“No, but I-”</p><p>“If the Halo has been destroyed, you would be. Even when it’s just been momentarily spent before, you’ve had to be carried, bodily. Several times.”</p><p>“Three times. Three isn’t technically several, is it?” A brief, out-of-place pursing of Beatrice’s lips says <em>it is</em> before Ava continues. And the <em>strong</em> still isn’t stable, because she feels her heart jolt as her airway starts to constrict around the words that follow. “But why I can’t feel it? And the sword. Beatrice, that’s pretty fuck- pretty freaking impossible to ignore. Why isn’t the Divinium resonating with it? What if it’s, like, this gradual thing and my body’s just going to start breaking down and-”</p><p>“Ava.”</p><p>“-and if we don’t have the Halo, then what are we gonna do about Adriel and his entire wraith legion? And Duretti’s probably gonna call Vatican III to deal with a couple tiny explosions and all <em>anyone</em> does is lie, and-”</p><p>“<em>Ava</em>.”</p><p>“<em>Beatrice</em>. How are you not reacting?” Ava demands with a flash of anger that takes them both by surprise. There’s no light bursting from her back to accompany it - just the cold moonlight illuminating the mere inches of space between them. “How are you so goddamn calm about all this right now?”</p><p>Beatrice’s eyes harden, and her lip twitches before she catches it between her teeth.</p><p>“Because someone has to be.” Another mantle, a burden Ava can almost see sinking onto Beatrice’s shoulders there in the bed. “And if everyone else is compromised, like you said, it has to be me. I have to look out for the Sisters. I have to look out for <em>you.</em> Because right now, this is about you.” Beatrice crosses her arms over her chest, defensive, huddled, not defiant, and Ava thinks about coming to consciousness wrapped up in them. “It’s not just some heroic obligation. It’s implied in the vows I took, and in what the OCS is. Everything I am, I must be for the Sisters and our faith in God. I have to be calm. I will be the useful one, because I have to be. You’re not a burden, Ava, but I have to be able to think. And I <em>can’t</em> think with you unraveling like this. I can’t think with you not trusting.”</p><p>“But what about-”</p><p>Another breaking point, reached.</p><p>Beatrice cuts her off, unfamiliar weary sharpness blistering into what she says.</p><p>“I really don’t know how else to reassure you.”</p><p>And hearing it makes Ava’s pleading admission the smallest sound she’s ever made. Everything slows around them.</p><p>“Just try?” So softly, yet her voice still cracks. “Please. I’m sorry.”</p><p>Mental fortitude, meet rock bottom. What’s not spoken, though? <em>I need you</em>. Ava needs all of them. Ava needs Beatrice. She doesn’t say it, not exactly, but progress is progress.</p><p>Delayed recognition of the loss of composure sends remorse crawling across Beatrice’s face. She sighs deeply, squeezing her eyes shut, and runs a hand through her hair, once again appearing so definitively <em>exhausted</em>. Ava sees Hell in every wrinkle in the corners of her eyes; she sees her own free fall reflected from another angle.</p><p>So much heaviness, and yet.</p><p>“<em>You make known to me the path of life</em>.” The words fall from Beatrice’s lips with a gentle, adamant ease that makes Ava wonder how many times they’re spoken each day. “I know our philosophies are different, Ava, but that’s the truth to which I’m hewn. This is not the end. There’s always more.” She looks straight at Ava, straight through to her spine, to everything that’s there and everything that’s not there. “<em>In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it</em>.”</p><p>And John’s old words in Beatrice’s voice are very different from the same ones spoken by Sister Frances. A potent sermon, a whole new sacrament, consecration through the confusion. Talking some integral sense, for once, to the chaos in Ava’s head.</p><p>There’s candlelight flickering in Beatrice’s pupils.</p><p>Ava, drawn to it with sheer impossibility, speaks before she remembers that words even exist.</p><p>“Can I stay here, with you?” What she needs, pouring forth, even though it makes her visibly cringe. “I mean. It’s a lot to ask, yeah. And I totally meant on the floor, like, <em>totally</em> on the floor, because these beds are small and boundaries are an absolute thing, so-”</p><p>Beatrice, one again, holds up a hand to silence her, but avoids Ava’s anxious gaze as she gives her reply.</p><p>“Just…” Clenched jaw, steeling sigh, she brushes her hair back from her face with quick fingers. Then, another tug of the shirt over her collarbone. “Just pick up your blanket and come here.”</p><p>Ava’s very perception careens. “Oh. Are you, uh. Are you sure?”</p><p>Beatrice blinks twice and then flashes her a nervous, tight-lipped smile. “You were passed out and drooling on me for a very long time on the way here. What’s a bit longer?”</p><p>“Hey. You told me I didn’t drool.”</p><p>The bed is just wide enough for both of them to fit, lying on their backs, pressed carefully side to side, each under her own blanket. And it takes quite a few moments of silent staring at the ceiling to get used to the contact between them - how their clueless bodies occupy each other’s space and the blatant way they begin to share heat.</p><p>Finally, Beatrice speaks, soft and raspy with the proximity.</p><p>“I think of Sister Melanie’s passage in the Journal. The language she used to describe the Halo’s release in the pub. A blinding light, a devastating blast. <em>Drained</em>. How something elemental amplified the Halo’s energy and triggered some unmitigated raw power .”</p><p>“Right,” Ava murmurs, aware of how Beatrice’s arm is flush against hers (through several layers of material). “Nazis.”</p><p>“But we don’t hear the true end of her account,” Beatrice continues, ignoring the semi-relevant contribution. “We don’t know what happened to the Halo in the aftermath. An emergence of power like that seems identical to what happened at the Vatican. Maybe there’s more in the Journal. Maybe other Warrior Nuns have experienced what you’re experiencing right now. Maybe its power is still momentarily diverted to healing you. We’ll find an answer, Ava, and we’ll deal with any potentiality<strong>.</strong>”</p><p>As usual, though, Ava is about four mental steps behind Beatrice.</p><p>“Yeah, my absolute freakout.”</p><p>“Why do you keep referring to it like that?”</p><p>“Because I completely lost control, Beatrice. In a way I had no idea I was capable of. I felt far away from my body, again. Like I was trapped. And everyone else felt far away, too. Just me and this ferocious power, incinerating everything around me and taking me right the heck along with it.” Ava shudders, and feels the energy transfer into Beatrice and then dissipate. “I’m afraid of myself. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”</p><p>And the reply shouldn’t have caught Ava off guard.</p><p>“You know I do.”</p><p>Quiet, so unassuming. A reminder of every cloaked burden kept hidden from the light.</p><p>Ava bites her lip as the word <em>idiot</em> flashes again and again behind her eyes. But Beatrice, also seemingly hesitant to dwell there, moves on before Ava can make an attempt at a fumbling apology.</p><p>“Maybe hearing another account will help soothe your fears.” The old but clean pillowcase rustles as she turns her head to look at Ava. “It was terrifying. But not in the sense of horror or intimidation. To the contrary, it was more like a moment of awesome peace among the havoc. It was the most splendidly powerful thing I’ve ever seen.”</p><p>“Well, maybe I never should have had that much power. Maybe that’s why it’s gone now.”</p><p>“No,” Beatrice tells her, simply. “You <em>were</em> the power, Ava. <em>Are</em>.” Ava hears a distorted and faraway echo of that word, <em>chosen</em>. “And it was…”</p><p>“It was what?”</p><p>“It was beautiful.” Beatrice’s eyes flash in the moonlight, and Ava feels the world come around. “You were beautiful.”</p><p>Only here, only now. To stand, to not run. To face. To reach out. Full to brimming, and choosing to brim with how much she <em>wants</em>. And how much she suddenly wants Beatrice to know. How her mind never stops and has never really stopped, ever, compensating for her body. How the overall-disinterested administrators at St. Michael’s made a typo on her birthdate in their official records and never bothered to correct it. How her mother’s face is slowly receding into oblivion, despite her every attempt to remember it - to the point where just sometimes, when Ava tries to picture her, she can only see her herself reflected back.</p><p>These truths come out in a strange way.</p><p>“I can’t lose my purpose,” Ava says, and she means much more than she says. “I’ve never actually been able to hold anything I’ve wanted.” What she wants feels close.</p><p>“Your purpose is intact,” Beatrice promises. “And to be afraid of yourself, to not know who you are? Many are, and many don’t. Others have seen themselves in full, but aren’t ready to accept what it is that they know.”</p><p>The general phrasing doesn’t overshadow the personal intentions.</p><p>“Maybe we need to work on that together,” Ava whispers.</p><p>“Maybe we need to sleep.”</p><p>Ava has no defensive rebuttal or clever argument to hurl back at that.</p><p>More utter quiet falls over them as they lie there, carefully-checked, touching only in the necessary ways. It’s still just enough to get the tangles out of Ava’s head - she can almost feel the frantic psychic energy flowing out through where they’re connected (shoulder elbow hip knees ankles). It flows into Beatrice, and then Ava feels it no longer. Heat moves to cold, energy moves to ease. Entropy cannot decrease. Ava can breathe. Comfort, solace, wave after wave.</p><p>Beatrice’s eyes are closed, and Ava’s forcing hers to be the same, but her limbs are less calm than her mind. Inadvertent movements - a shift, a sigh, a flex of her back or thigh or a twitch of a foot - take over, as usual. Making up for lost time. But.</p><p>“Fidgeting,” Beatrice mutters, half-formed syllables serving up a reminder.</p><p>“Sorry. I swear I’m trying to chill.”</p><p>“You move less when you talk. Maybe try speaking yourself to sleep? Spare both of us. <em>Quietly</em>, though, please.”</p><p>“What, like a bedtime story?” Ava finds it in her to smirk, taking a quick look at Beatrice’s dozy face from the corner of her eye. “Wouldn’t know what to say to entertain you. It’s not like I have the entirety of Psalms memorized.”</p><p>An exasperated pause.</p><p>“Anything is fine.”</p><p>“Okay. Yeah, sure.”</p><p>Because it comes to her all at once, what she can recite, the audiobook she listened to over and over and then some more until she could see the words with her eyes closed. The poster hanging next to another bed, a few lives ago. There are passages she can recall without effort. Ava chooses one halfway through a beginning, where a resolution grabs an unnoticed hold in a dreamed guise of freedom.</p><p>“Suddenly he was standing on short springy turf, on a summer evening when the slanting rays of the sun gilded the ground. The landscape that he was looking at recurred so often in his dreams that he was never fully certain whether or not he had seen it in the real world,” she recites, quietly (as requested). “In his waking thoughts he called it the Golden Country.”</p><p>“Wasn’t expecting Orwell.” And Ava wasn’t expecting commentary, but here they are.</p><p>“It’s my favorite,” she explains with a shrug. “Didn’t think Orwell was on the reading list in nun school.”</p><p>“I went to boarding school, Ava. I obviously had literature class.”</p><p>Ava shushes her. “Pay attention.”</p><p>Without looking, Ava knows that Beatrice’s eyes open simply to roll before falling shut again. She picks up the narration again, skipping a few lines to get to the good part.</p><p>“The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside.”</p><p>By the time Ava is partway through the third line, Beatrice’s body has gone slack, her breathing even - regular, slow, hypnotizing.</p>
<hr/><p>Ava must have dozed off after all, because next thing she knows, she’s opening her eyes to early sun.</p><p>It comes in all at once, spilling through the window and straight into Ava’s body, into every corner of her awareness. Penetrating, warm, filling her and reminding her of what the previous day lacked. Casting its light onto all of the newness she’s felt since her screaming voice rang out in that crypt - dizzy, confused, in pure awe. Not the painful sensations, though. Not the ones that keep her up at night, wrapped in anxious hypervigilance. No, with the light coming close, those dense shadows rearrange, exposing the breathtaking phenomena that are more easily overpowered by the dark.</p><p>Her feet sinking into loose sand as each strike-and-drive propels her forward, again and again and again, boundless ahead. The deafening thump of electronic bass saturating the sweat-humid air of an old prison, compelling her body to move with exhilarated abandon, just the same as the other bodies clustered all around her. The dagger’s Divinium blade liquefying in her tight fist, dripping through her fingers, coating her in what could destroy her.</p><p>And there’s another all-new sensation blazing through her system even now. Beatrice’s warmth pressed tight against her. Beatrice’s arm, free from her blanket and draped across Ava’s middle. Her head half-nestled into the space awkward between Ava’s shoulder and ribs, formed by the way Ava’s arm is thrown back against the pillows.</p><p>It’s a strange sort of thing, when words she’s long known come together to form a novel thought: looks like Beatrice is a cuddler.</p><p>Not daring to move too fast or too far, Ava glances down at Beatrice. At the way her hair is in her face, her mouth askew, sharing the bed and this sunlight and the very idea of space with Ava. It’s a lapse in the melancholy, the fear, it’s forgetting the reason <em>why not</em>.</p><p>It’s a tingling sensation. A rush, like her body doesn’t know what to do with it. Something elemental and critical brushing away the clouds.</p><p>With one soft breath, that timeless feeling flows over and through her. Some unknown eternity, but not in a way that unnerves her. A spark and whir of warmth between her shoulder blades, weaker than before but so undeniably <em>there</em>, that only makes her cringe for an instant. Exalted relief sends her grinning, silent but insistent tears pricking at her eyes, and thankfully Ava has no need to twist around and look at the floor beside the bed to know that the Holy Sword is alight with blue. She just believes - she just trusts.</p><p>There’s still hope for all that <em>more</em> to come. For her. For Mary, and Camila, and Lilith. For Beatrice. All of them. Fate and faith, both intervening. They’re going through capital-H Hell, but maybe whatever Heaven exists isn’t out of reach.</p><p>Then, a thought, surprising and nearly-intrusive. Dante had a Beatrice, too, to guide him into all things and through perdition.</p><p>The village is already long awake, Ava knows, gathered at the overlook to witness and thank this sunrise. Celebrating the new day, treating each one as special, and every moment as a beginning. They might be right. Ava missed one sunrise, but she’s seeing this one in full. And life really <em>is</em> what happens in between. These hushed moments in dusty golden sunbeams, stolen away from everything. Just a brief surge of being sure, of being connected. A spark of something wild and reverent.</p><p>Wild and reverent, like wanting to hold Beatrice closer. There in the light, she can try. Her throat tightens as she does. One simple shift: the arm above her head curves around Beatrice’s shoulders, completing the communion of their bodies. Ava can feel her breathing. She can feel the Halo, like innumerable waves of purpose.</p><p>Ava set out to break cycles. And this feels like an act of righteous defiance, a first step, there in the light. She realizes she’s still smiling, and smiles some more.</p><p>“<em>Feliz dia nuevo</em>,” Ava mouths to herself.</p><p>But it must have been louder than she intended, because Beatrice stirs. Ava watches her slowly move from dreamspace to conscious recognition. And then, Beatrice freezes. Tenses, like there’s fire running through her. A wince of embarrassed panic circling in. A warning that this moment is about to end.</p><p>Ava fights to stop it, soft of voice, prayerful of voice.</p><p>“We don’t have to go yet.” Her palm is careful against Beatrice’s waist. Soft cotton. “It’s just us here. Stay, Beatrice.” Choose to stay. “Just for a little while longer.”</p><p>Excruciating seconds tick by as Beatrice, still rigid, trembles. Ava’s breathing turns serrated. The closeness is splintering. Not knowing if her <em>reaching</em> will be accepted is splintering.</p><p>Finally, with one final tremble, Beatrice relaxes. Like a cover broken. Something deep exposed to the light. And there’s something else coming, in the way her fingers twitch against Ava, right at her ribs. A timid sigh, shared.</p><p>Beatrice’s carries something reckless on the exhale.</p><p>“Elizabeth.” It’s barely a whisper, it’s just a test, it’s a hesitant exposure, a past to be kept right here. Safe. And Ava somehow actually understands immediately, for once, when it really counts. She’ll make it count. Ava will hold it and keep it safe, even though her hands are still clumsy. Her hands are on Beatrice. And Beatrice must <em>feel</em> safe because her voice becomes just the slightest bit stronger as she takes tentative hold of Ava’s hoodie. “Libby.”</p><p>Every bit of air is sucked out and held there, trembling, before it’s allowed to rush back in with even more force. They’re drowned in daylight. Each shadow disappears, for now.</p><p>They lie there for as long as they can. Only the single hand holding onto Ava’s clothes stays tight.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Again, thank you for joining me on this weird post-crisis road trip. And thousands of thanks to this amazing fandom, everywhere it exists! Can't wait to see what these nuns get up to in season two. Look for more works from me soon!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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